Dear M^r Darwin

Nothing, as you know, gives me more pleasure than helping you in any way. Long may your wants be insatiable.

Lynch is immensely gratified with the notice you have taken of him.¹ He is a good fellow but nurses a private ambition to be a ‘Professor’. I don’t think he would be so happy as in his present vocation where he has plants & opportunities for study and observation and a good enough berth as things go.

Your observations upon Trifolium resupinatum are very curious indeed. I am afraid Sir Joseph Hooker has a vastly too great opinion of my knowledge— At any rate I generally find myself at fault when you wish to know anything.²

The only instance of any histological difference in the two halves of a leaf which I call to mind is one which D^r Welwitsch brought before the Scientific Committee of the R. Hort. Soc. Ap. 17, 1872. (see Journ. R. Hort. Soc. n.s. vol. iv, p xii)³ “A new species of Maranta was remarkable for its unsymmetrical leaves, elliptical on one side, oblong on the other, and white beneath, except a marginal band on the elliptical side”. I remember the specimens which were certainly striking. I suppose this had something to do with the convolute vernation though I do not quite see how.⁴