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To Lawson Tait   15 August [1875]1

Down, | Beckenham, Kent. | Railway Station | Orpington. S.E.R.

Aug. 15th

My dear Sir

I must write one line to thank you cordially for your kind Review in the Spectator, which is most honourable to me & more than I deserve. You have, also, pleased me very much by your notice of my son Francis.—2 You will think me extra sceptical, but I cannot understand how the virgin pitchers of Nepenthes can have contained your droserine, seeing that the fluid was acid, at least in one case, & yet did not digest.3

My dear Sir | Yours sincerely | Ch. Darwin

I have been working so hard at new Edits, of old Books that I have had no time to think of anything else,, & have done too much, & must leave home for a little rest.—4

Footnotes

1
The year is established by the reference to Tait’s review of Insectivorous plants (see n. 2, below).
2
In his unsigned review of Insectivorous plants in the Spectator, 14 August 1875, Tait credited Francis Darwin, who promised to be a ‘worthy son of a noble father’, with making valuable contributions to the work (ibid., p.1037). See also letter from Lawson Tait, 15 July [1875] and n. 3.
3
In his paper in Nature, 29 July 1875, pp. 251–2, Tait proposed the name ‘droserine’ (‘droserin’ elsewhere) for a digestive substance he believed he had isolated from the secretions of insectivorous plants, and reported on experiments carried out at CD’s suggestion on unopened tropical pitcher-plants (Nepenthes). See also letter from Lawson Tait, 15 July [1875] and n. 5, and letter to Lawson Tait, 20 July [1875].
4
CD had been working on the second editions of both Variation and Climbing plants; he stayed at the home of William Erasmus Darwin in Southampton from 28 August to 11 September 1875 (CD’s ‘Journal’ (Appendix II)).

Bibliography

Climbing plants: On the movements and habits of climbing plants. By Charles Darwin. London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts & Green; Williams & Norgate. 1865.

Insectivorous plants. By Charles Darwin. London: John Murray. 1875.

Variation: The variation of animals and plants under domestication. By Charles Darwin. 2 vols. London: John Murray. 1868.

Summary

Thanks him for his kind review of Insectivorous plants in the Spectator. Disputes Tait’s report of a Nepenthes that trapped a fly but did not digest it.

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 10177F,” accessed on 16 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-10177F.xml

Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 23

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