To J. S. Burdon Sanderson 15 August 1873
Bassett Southampton
Aug 15. 1873
My dear Dr Sanderson
I am much obliged for your letter which has been forwarded to me here—but I return home next Thursday—1 I assure you I felt quite guilty when I read in the Times your grand address on Physiology, at the thought that I had troubled you, at such a time, with my queries.2
I quite understand what you say about heat rigor.3
I shd think that it wd be extremely interesting to ascertain whether there is any electrical change in the leaves of Drosera when they are excited; but I shd think Dionæa wd be much better for the purpose. As far as I can imperfectly make out the lower surface of the leaf in Dionæa, & of the tentacles (i.e prolongations of the leaf) of Drosera is always in a state of tension, but is over mastered by the contraction of the upper surface alone—4
Therefore I imagine that the upper & lower surface wd exhibit an electrical change (if such there be) during the act of inflection Now Dionæa, from the large size of the leaf & from the suddenness & greatness of the movement, wd be the best to operate on. If on further reflection you are willing to investigate this point, I wd gladly send you by a servant plants in good condition, for I suppose you wd require to have the plants at the Institute & not at Down—5
If you obtained any result, it seems to me that it wd be a remarkable discovery & well worth your publishing.—6
I had thought that it might be worth while to test Dionæa during inflection by the thermo-electric pile. A common thermometer gave no indication of any rise of temperature, so that it seems very doubtful whether the experiment wd be worth trying.7 If you find you have time & inclination to examine Dionæa or Drosera under the foregoing point of view, please to let me hear—
With many thanks yours very sincerely— | Charles Darwin
Footnotes
Bibliography
Wilson, Graham. 1979. The Brown Animal Sanatory Institution. Journal of Hygiene 83: 171–97.
Summary
Thinks it would be worth while testing for electrical changes in the leaves of insectivorous plants.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-9013
- From
- Charles Robert Darwin
- To
- John Scott Burdon Sanderson, 1st baronet
- Sent from
- Bassett
- Source of text
- University of British Columbia Library, Rare Books and Special Collections (Darwin - Burdon Sanderson letters RBSC-ARC-1731-1-13)
- Physical description
- LS(A) 4pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 9013,” accessed on 26 September 2022, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-9013.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 21