From Francis Darwin [28 May 1876]1
secreting glands of hanstein.2 there were crusts of secretions on some glands & bright globules in others; i thought it would be interesting to see whether the ammonia would not make the protoplasm active, & make a disturbance among the secretion all of a sudden i saw a little blob sticking out beyond the gland, as in fig. 2.
i thought it was secretion, but i cannot swear that it wasn’t there before. anyhow i soon saw it alter its shape, &underwent regular protoplasmic movement.
i thought it must be some kind of amoeba or plasmodium, sticking onto a gland so i looked at the next gland & there was just the same thing i saw a great ribbon of protoplasm, & to my delight, ablack granule, fig. 3., which walked down it & disapeared in the main body of the mass.3
i afterwads saw the same thing in 5 or6 other glands, though not in every one which i examined. they were always in the same place, viz in the centre of the gland & this does not look at all like a parasite, i think. if it doesnt all come to nothing, it is grand, because it is like the absorption of fat in the intestines by protoplasmic feelers between the epithelium cells. also, a resinous secretion might become a slimy one, then the plant would catch live insects, & the pepsin secretion might be developed—somehow—in a manner better imagined than described. i shall try feeding the protoplasm with vermillion like one does a colourless blood corpuscle, & then it ought to pass into the gland. on reinke principles ought not marginal tentacles of drosera to be serration-glands?4
hooray for theory. blow facts.
yoors affec | f. d.
Footnotes
Bibliography
Cross and self fertilisation: The effects of cross and self fertilisation in the vegetable kingdom. By Charles Darwin. London: John Murray. 1876.
Hanstein, Johannes. 1868. Ueber die Organe der Harz- und Schleim-Absonderung in den Laubknospen. Botanische Zeitung 26: 697–713, 721–36, 745–61, and 769–87.
Reinke, Johannes. 1873. Ueber die Function der Blattzähne und die morphologische Werthigkeit einiger Laubblatt-Nectarien. Nachrichten von der Königl. Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften und der Georg-Augusts-Universität zu Göttingen (1873): 822–7.
Summary
Reports his discovery of the behaviour of protoplasm in teasel cells.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-10515J
- From
- Francis Darwin
- To
- Charles Robert Darwin
- Source of text
- DAR 274.1: 37–8
- Physical description
- TLS(A) TLS(A) inc
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 10515J,” accessed on 26 September 2022, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-10515J.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 24