My dear F.

Porliera went beautifully to sleep in my study & awoke well early in the back & obscure part of my study, & has kept awake all day under skylight: it has circumnutated in simple manner.— Now I sh^d like to hear whether it is kept hot & dry at Würzburg; for it seems an odd case.— I will look to stomata some day.—²

Maize radicles have behaved splendidly & George has made some capital sketches. On other hand radicles of Cotton-plant almost always utterly insensible to the little sq.— I suppose I cannot get right temperature or keep air damp enough.

I wish I c^d get some cement which w^d hold under water.³

I have been looking to day at flowers of the Marantaceous Thalia dealbata:⁴ they w^d be well worth investigating; if you pass bristle down young flower, & you then hear a click & the pistil shoots across the flower & becomes wound up like a corkscrew & seizes bristle; but when bristle withdrawn it is covered with pollen.— I think pistil is held straight by a fold in a stiff petal, & slightest touch releases it, & then bang it goes off, ensuring cross-fertilisation.

Good bye, as I have nobody to talk to, about my work, I scribble to you.—

I send Nature.⁵

All the family are here & all adoring Bernard⁶

C. D.

I forgot to thank you for extract from Cieleski & about Sachs & sleeping plants.— Notwithstanding what he says, I sh^d. like to see sections, on your return, of bent & straight oats-cotyledons.⁷