From R. L. Tait 17 June [1875]
7, Great Charles St. | Birmingham.
June 17
My Dear Sir,
The above was cut from a paper at a distance & sent me yesterday. I feel flattered at the bracketting
I am so full of my insectivorous plants that I cannot keep from writing about them, their interest is so intense.
I have quite failed to obtain any evidence of a conclusive character that the leaves absorb after having digested: but I notice that my Dionoea leaves open after macerating a blue bottle for 12 or 14 days, full of fluid & that fluid containing abundance of nitrogenous matter, runs down a channel on the leaf stalk to the root
For manure? Fancy each Dionoea leaf a little patent manure manufactory!4
Now I find that the Aldrovandra is stated to float on stagnant waters in the South of Europe, but I have never seen it and can’t find any statement that it is either fly-catching or fly digesting.5 If it is either it would rather tend to upset my view
Can it be got? I have tried many places but cannot hear of any source
There are some very curious facts in support of my sewage notion about the Sarracenia,6 but I must wait & see & not trouble you too much, only this seems to me such a quaint notion that I could not help writing it.
Yours faithfully, | Lawson Tait
Footnotes
Bibliography
[Marsh-Caldwell, Anne.] 1834. Two old men’s tales: the deformed, and the admiral’s daughter. 2 vols. London: Saunders & Otley.
OED: The Oxford English dictionary. Being a corrected re-issue with an introduction, supplement and bibliography of a new English dictionary. Edited by James A. H. Murray, et al. 12 vols. and supplement. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1970. A supplement to the Oxford English dictionary. 4 vols. Edited by R. W. Burchfield. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1972–86. The Oxford English dictionary. 2d edition. 20 vols. Prepared by J. A. Simpson and E. S. C. Weiner. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1989. Oxford English dictionary additional series. 3 vols. Edited by John Simpson et al. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1993–7.
Summary
Insectivorous plants: the means and site of absorption of digested animal matter. [Newspaper clipping enclosed.]
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-10022
- From
- Robert Lawson (Lawson) Tait
- To
- Charles Robert Darwin
- Sent from
- Birmingham
- Source of text
- DAR 178: 12
- Physical description
- ALS 3pp encl
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 10022,” accessed on 24 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-10022.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 23