To W. M. Canby 19 February 1873
Down, | Beckenham, Kent.
Feb 19— 1873
Dear Sir
I am very much obliged for your kind letter, & for the printed article which is fuller than the MS. that I saw before.1
I find that I erred in supposing that the leaves never opened a second time.2 I did suppose that you resided near the habitation of the Dionea, which I look at as the most wonderful plant in the world.3
If you do visit the proper district I shd be very much obliged if you wd open a dozen oldish leaves to see what sized insects they capture.
I am aware that a very minute insect wd start the leaf, but I suspect that they wd generally escape through the apertures at the bases of the spikes before they are completely interlocked.
With my best thanks, | believe me dear Sir | yours faithfully | Ch. Darwin
Footnotes
Summary
CD would like to know what were the sizes of insects caught by the older leaves of Dionaea.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-8773
- From
- Charles Robert Darwin
- To
- William Marriott Canby
- Sent from
- Down
- Source of text
- The Society of Natural History of Delaware
- Physical description
- LS 3pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 8773,” accessed on 12 September 2023, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-8773.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 21