More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume Ii Part 44

One of his earliest letters on this subject was addressed in August, 1873, to Sir Joseph Hooker (736/2. Published in "Life and Letters,"

III., page 339.):

"I want a little information from you, and if you do not yourself know, please to enquire of some of the wise men of Kew.

"Why are the leaves and fruit of so many plants protected by a thin layer of waxy matter (like the common cabbage), or with fine hair, so that when such leaves or fruit are immersed in water they appear as if encased in thin gla.s.s? It is really a pretty sight to put a pod of the common pea, or a raspberry, into water. I find several leaves are thus protected on the under surface and not on the upper.

"How can water injure the leaves, if indeed this is at all the case?"

On this latter point Darwin wrote to the late Lord Farrer:

"I am now become mad about drops of water injuring leaves. Please ask Mr. Payne (736/3. Lord Farrer's gardener.) whether he believes, FROM HIS OWN EXPERIENCE, that drops of water injure leaves or fruit in his conservatories. It is said that the drops act as burning-gla.s.ses; if this is true, they would not be at all injurious on cloudy days. As he is so acute a man, I should very much like to hear his opinion. I remember when I grew hothouse orchids I was cautioned not to wet their leaves; but I never then thought on the subject."

The next letter, though of later date than some which follow it, is printed here because it briefly sums his results and serves as guide to the letters dealing with the subject.)

LETTER 736. TO W. THISELTON-DYER.

(736/4. Published in "Life and Letters," III., page 341.)

Down, September 5th [1877].

One word to thank you. I declare, had it not been for your kindness, we should have broken down. As it is we have made out clearly that with some plants (chiefly succulent) the bloom checks evaporation--with some certainly prevents attacks of insects; with SOME sea-sh.o.r.e plants prevents injury from salt water, and, I believe, with a few prevents injury from pure water resting on the leaves. This latter is as yet the most doubtful and the most interesting point in relation to the movements of plants.

(736/5. Modern research, especially that of Stahl on transpiration ("Bot. Zeitung," 1897, page 71) has shown that the question is more complex than it appeared in 1877. Stahl's point of view is that moisture remaining on a leaf checks the transpiration-current; and by thus diminis.h.i.+ng the flow of mineral nutriment interferes with the process of a.s.similation. Stahl's idea is doubtless applicable to the whole problem of bloom on leaves. For other references to bloom see letters 685, 689 and 693.)

LETTER 737. TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, August 19th, 1873.

The next time you walk round the garden ask Mr. Smith (737/1. Probably John Smith (1798-1888), for some years Curator, Royal Gardens, Kew.), or any of your best men, what they think about injury from watering during suns.h.i.+ne. One of your men--viz., Mr. Payne, at Abinger, who seems very acute--declares that you may water safely any plant out of doors in suns.h.i.+ne, and that you may do the same for plants under gla.s.s if the sashes are opened. This seems to me very odd, but he seems positive on the point, and acts on it in raising splendid grapes. Another good gardener maintains that it is only COLD water dripping often on the same point of a leaf that ever injures it. I am utterly perplexed, but interested on the point. Give me what you learn when you come to Down.

I should like to hear what plants are believed to be most injured by being watered in suns.h.i.+ne, so that I might get such.

I expect that I shall be utterly beaten, as on so many other points; but I intend to make a few experiments and observations. I have already convinced myself that drops of water do NOT act as burning lenses.

LETTER 738. TO J.D. HOOKER. December 20th [1873].

I find that it is no use going on with my experiments on the evil effects of water on bloom-divested leaves. Either I erred in the early autumn or summer in some incomprehensible manner, or, as I suspect to be the case, water is only injurious to leaves when there is a good supply of actinic rays. I cannot believe that I am all in the wrong about the movements of the leaves to shoot off water.

The upshot of all this is that I want to keep all the plants from Kew until the spring or early summer, as it is mere waste of time going on at present.

LETTER 739. TO W. THISELTON-DYER. Down, July 22nd [1877].

Many thanks for seeds of the Malva and information about Averrhoa, which I perceived was sensitive, as A. carambola is said to be; and about Mimosa sensitiva. The log-wood [Haematoxylon] has interested me much.

The wax is very easily removed, especially from the older leaves, and I found after squirting on the leaves with water at 95 deg, all the older leaves became coated, after forty-eight hours, in an astonis.h.i.+ng manner with a black Uredo, so that they looked as if sprinkled with soot and water. But not one of the younger leaves was affected. This has set me to work to see whether the "bloom" is not a protection against parasites. As soon as I have ascertained a little more about the case (and generally I am quite wrong at first) I will ask whether I could have a very small plant, which should never be syringed with water above 60 deg, and then I suspect the leaves would not be spotted, as were the older ones on the plant, when it arrived from Kew, but nothing like what they were after my squirting.

In an old note of yours (which I have just found) you say that you have a sensitive Schrankia: could this be lent me?

I have had lent me a young Coral-tree (Erythrina), which is very sickly, yet shows odd sleep movements. I suppose I could buy one, but Hooker told me first to ask you for anything.

Lastly, have you any seaside plants with bloom? I find that drops of sea-water corrode sea-kale if bloom is removed; also the var. littorum of Tritic.u.m repens. (By the way, my plants of the latter, grown in pots here, are now throwing up long flexible green blades, and it is very odd to see, ON THE SAME CULM, the rigid grey bloom-covered blades and the green flexible ones.) Cabbages, ill-luck to them, do not seem to be hurt by salt water. Hooker formerly told me that Salsola kali, a var. of Salicornia, one species of Suaeda, Euphorbia peplis, Lathyrus maritimus, Eryngium maritimum, were all glaucous and seaside plants. It is very improbable that you have any of these or of foreigners with the same attributes.

G.o.d forgive me: I hope that I have not bored you greatly.

By all the rules of right the leaves of the logwood ought to move (as if partially going to sleep) when syringed with tepid water. The leaves of my little plant do not move at all, and it occurs to me as possible, though very improbable, that it would be different with a larger plant with perhaps larger leaves. Would you some day get a gardener to syringe violently, with water kept in a hothouse, a branch on one of your largest logwood plants and observe [whether?] leaves move together towards the apex of leaf?

By the way, what astonis.h.i.+ng nonsense Mr. Andrew Murray has been writing about leaves and carbonic acid! I like to see a man behaving consistently...

What a lot I have scribbled to you!

(FIGURE 13. Leaf of Trifolium resupinatum (from a drawing by Miss Pertz).)

LETTER 740. TO W. THISELTON-DYER. [August, 1877.]

There is no end to my requests. Can you spare me a good plant (or even two) of Oxalis sensitiva? The one which I have (formerly from Kew) has been so maltreated that I dare not trust my results any longer.

Please give the enclosed to Mr. Lynch. (740/1. Mr. Lynch, now Curator of the Cambridge Botanic Garden, was at this time in the R. Bot. Garden, Kew. Mr. Lynch described the movements of Averrhoa bilimbi in the "Linn.

Soc. Journ," Volume XVI., page 231. See also "The Power of Movement in Plants," page 330.) The spontaneous movements of the Averrhoa are very curious.

You sent me seeds of Trifolium resupinatum, and I have raised plants, and some former observations which I did not dare to trust have proved accurate. It is a very little fact, but curious. The half of the lateral leaflets (marked by a cross) on the lower side have no bloom and are wetted, whereas the other half has bloom and is not wetted, so that the two sides look different to the naked eye. The cells of the eipdermis appear of a different shape and size on the two sides of the leaf [Figure 13].

When we have drawings and measurements of cells made, and are sure of our facts, I shall ask you whether you know of any case of the same leaf differing histologically on the two sides, for Hooker always says you are a wonderful man for knowing what has been made out.

(740/2. The biological meaning of the curious structure of the leaves of Trifolium resupinatum remains a riddle. The stomata and (speaking from memory) the trichomes differ on the two halves of the lateral leaflets.)

LETTER 741. TO L. ERRERA.

(741/1. Professor L. Errera, of Brussels wrote, as a student, to Darwin, asking permission to send the MS. of an essay by his friend S. Gevaert and himself on cross and self-fertilisation, and which was afterwards published in the "Bull. Soc. Bot. Belg." XVII., 1878. The terms xenogamy, geitonogamy, and autogamy were first suggested by Kerner in 1876; their definition will be found at page 9 of Ogle's translation of Kerner's "Flowers and their Unbidden Guests," 1878. In xenogamy the pollen comes from another PLANT; in geitonogamy from another FLOWER on the same PLANT; in autogamy from the androecium of the fertilised FLOWER. Allogamy embraces xenogamy and geitonogamy.)

Down, October 4th, 1877.

I have now read your MS. The whole has interested me greatly, and is very clearly written. I wish that I had used some such terms as autogamy, xenogamy, etc...I entirely agree with you on the a priori probability of geitonogamy being more advantageous than autogamy; and I cannot remember having ever expressed a belief that autogamy, as a general rule, was better than geitonogamy; but the cases recorded by me seem too strong not to make me suspect that there was some unknown advantage in autogamy. In one place I insert the caution "if this be really the case," which you quote. (741/2. See "Cross and Self-Fertilisation," pages 352, 386. The phrase referred to occurs in both pa.s.sages; that on page 386 is as follows: "We have also seen reason to suspect that self-fertilisation is in some peculiar manner beneficial to certain plants; but if this be really the case, the benefit thus derived is far more than counterbalanced by a cross with a fresh stock or with a slightly different variety." Errera and Gevaert conclude (pages 79-80) that the balance of the available evidence is in favour of the belief that geitonogamy is intermediate, in effectiveness, between autogamy and xenogamy.) I shall be very glad to be proved to be altogether in error on this point.

Accept my thanks for pointing out the bad erratum at page 301. I hope that you will experimentise on inconspicuous flowers (741/3. See Miss Bateson, "Annals of Botany," 1888, page 255, "On the Cross-Fertilisation of Inconspicuous Flowers:" Miss Bateson showed that Senecio vulgaris clearly profits by cross-fertilisation; Stellaria media and Capsella bursa-pastoris less certainly.); if I were not too old and too much occupied I would do so myself.

Finally let me thank you for the kind manner in which you refer to my work, and with cordial good wishes for your success...

LETTER 742. TO W. THISELTON-DYER. Down, October 9th, 1877.

One line to thank you much about Mertensia. The former plant has begun to make new leaves, to my great surprise, so that I shall be now well supplied. We have worked so well with the Averrhoa that unless the second species arrives in a very good state it would be superfluous to send it. I am heartily glad that you and Mrs. Dyer are going to have a holiday. I will look at you as a dead man for the next month, and nothing shall tempt me to trouble you. But before you enter your grave aid me if you can. I want seeds of three or four plants (not Leguminosae or Cruciferae) which produce large cotyledons. I know not in the least what plants have large cotyledons. Why I want to know is as follows: The cotyledons of Ca.s.sia go to sleep, and are sensitive to a touch; but what has surprised me much is that they are in constant movement up and down.

So it is with the cotyledons of the cabbage, and therefore I am very curious to ascertain how far this is general.

LETTER 743. TO W. THISELTON-DYER. Down, October 11th [1877].