To J. D. Hooker 14 November [1861]
Down. | Bromley. | Kent. S.E.
Nov. 14th.
My dear Hooker
I was very bad in bed yesterday,1 but not too bad to be much pleased by your note & magnificent lot of Bonateas;2 They have been soaked in water & are now in spirits & with a little dose of Nitric A. I have great hopes they will be clarified enough for dissection.—3
I was in foolish despair when I wrote, & thought all my work done for; & I cannot yet see how it is not “a great blow & discouragement”,—unless indeed I do find that the lower sepal & upper petals are sometimes in allied forms deeply bifid; if they are bifid, then cohesion is so common with the orchids, that the view which I imagined & showed by red lines may be true.4 Will it not be a very odd case that in Habenaria that the outlines of upper sepal, upper petal, & lower sepal (& indeed of Labellum) do not one of them give the real shape of these same sepals & petals?—
You are a true friend in need.— I can hardly bear to let Bonatea soak long enough.—
Adios | C. Darwin
Footnotes
Summary
Homologies of orchid flower vascularisation.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-3318
- From
- Charles Robert Darwin
- To
- Joseph Dalton Hooker
- Sent from
- Down
- Source of text
- DAR 115: 130
- Physical description
- ALS 4pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 3318,” accessed on 23 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-3318.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 9