From Francis Darwin 16 July 1881
Strassburg
July 16/81
My dear Father
I have got rid of my lumbago by blue pills & mustard plasters & starvation & am all right again.1 I had two days in which I couldn’t rest decently in any position.
I asked de Bary about Max Cornu, and he said he was a clever man who began much better than he went on; his monograph on the Saprolegniæ, was very good but he has lately done nothing but Phylloxera I know Dyer thinks him a great swell2 Wortmann thinks Pfeffer’s new book very good & not unreadable, though it has too much osmosis in it.3 I have made a little Referat for the Bot Z on a paper by an American in Pfeffers new “Arbeiten”4 He finds that if all the nectar is washed off a nectary it leaves off secreting tho’ if it is only sucked up leaving of course a certain film behind it begins again When the secretion has been stopped by washing it can be started by putting a drop of syrup on the nectary. I have been hunting for the paper on staining living root hairs but cannot find it, I believe I can when I get home.5 I showed de Bary the thing about the Loranthus which turns head over heels & he didn’t believe in it a bit, chiefly as being an unknown observer in the Gard Chron I must say I fully believe it, I dont see how a decent observer could make a mistake.6 I have been working at Bryonia embryos trying to trace the connection between the cell divisions in the embryo & the fully formed root It is horribly irregular with lots of queer oblique walls & very difficult, but it is good practice as nothing is known about it, so that I cant go & look in a book.7
There is a Lime with silvery underside to its leaves which twists its stalk so that the leaf becomes vertical, the parts of the tree in shade do not do so so it is a nice kind of paraheliotropism.8
When de Bary saw Pfeffer’s Arbeiten he said “Na, Pfeffer will auch einen Eisenbahn Zug für sich haben”9 That is a train pupils hanging onto him”
It continues frightfully hot 85 all day indoors and I thingk over 90 in shade out of doors.
Please give Ubbadud my love and say I liked his bubbling fountain letter very much & I will write to him next.10
I shall be precious glad to get back11 | Yours affect | F. D.
Many thanks for auto & photo12
Footnotes
Bibliography
Cornu, Maxime. 1872. Monographie des Saprolegniées. Étude physiologique et systématique. Annales des sciences naturelles: botanique 5th ser. 15: 5–198.
Cornu, Maxime. 1874. Études sur la nouvelle maladie de la vigne. Paris: Impr. nationale.
Cornu, Maxime. 1879a. Études sur le Phylloxera vastatrix. Paris: Académie des sciences.
Cornu, Maxime and Mer, Émile. 1878. Recherches sur l’absorption des matières colorantes par les racines. In Comptes rendus sténographiques du Congrès international de botanique et d’horticulture tenu à Paris du 16 au 24 août 1878. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale.
Movement in plants: The power of movement in plants. By Charles Darwin. Assisted by Francis Darwin. London: John Murray. 1880.
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.
Pfeffer, Wilhelm. 1877. Osmotische Untersuchungen. Studien zur zellmechanik. Leipzig: Wilhelm Engelmann.
Pfeffer, Wilhelm. 1881. Pflanzenphysiologie. Ein Handbuch des Stoffwechsels und Kraftwechsels in der Pflanze. 2 vols. Leipzig: Wilhelm Engelmann.
Wilson, William Powell. 1881. The cause of the excretion of water on the surface of nectaries. Untersuchungen aus dem botanischen Institut zu Tübingen 1 (1881–5): 1–22.
Summary
Reports de Bary’s opinion of Max Cornu. Accounts of various botanical experiments and observations.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-13245F
- From
- Francis Darwin
- To
- Charles Robert Darwin
- Sent from
- Strassburg
- Source of text
- DAR 274.1: 71
- Physical description
- ALS
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 13245F,” accessed on 19 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-13245F.xml