My dearest Darwin

If you do not object would you kindly sign the enclosed and return it to me?¹

I have been for the last four or five months at work at Orchideæ for Genera Plantarum and have been wonderfully assisted by your book on the fertilisation of Orchids.² I had no idea that Lindley and Reichenbach together could have brought the order into such a state of confusion both as to generic limitation and terminology for both showed great ability and intimate knowledge of species.³ I am very glad that you have suppressed the term caudicle which is indiscriminately applied to three very different organs— in Neottieæ &c a true caudicle or tail-like end of the pollen mass—in Epidendreæ a portion of the pollen not consolidated into the pollen masses but connecting them—in Vandeæ what you much more correctly have styled the pedicel, being as you have shown a production of the rostellum   I should however prefer the term stipes for pedicel is I believe as generally restricted to the stalk of a single flower as petiole is to the stalk of a leaf whilst stipes is used more generally as the support of any organ.⁴

I do not like the term gland generally used for what you have called disk but there is some inconvenience in using the latter term on account of its being more generally applied sometimes to an expansion of the torus sometimes to the centre of the upper surface of a petal etc.— the appearance of the part in question of the pollinarium is not always that which we associate with the word gland, and only very rarely like that of a quoit but I cannot at present devise a better term than the usually adopted one of gland, which in botany has not any very definite meaning being applied in different instances to very different organs.⁵

Your labours have done so much to the elucidation of the very curious modifications of the fertilising apparatus in the Order that I trust you will excuse my troubling you with these observations in the hopes that if any improved terminology occurs to you you would kindly communicate it— I have still I have no doubt six months work before I can get through the Order. Hooker is working up the Palms⁶

Yours very sincerly | George Bentham