ch. xvii.] MOVEMENT OF PLANTS. 335 



do nothing else and much enjoyed it, but always doubted 

 whether they were worth publishing. . . . 



" I received yesterday your article * on climbers, and it 

 has pleased me in an extraordinary and even silly manner. 

 You pay me a superb compliment, and as I have just said 

 to my wife, I think my friends must perceive that I like 

 praise, they give me such hearty doses. I always admire 

 your skill in reviews or abstracts, and you have done this 

 article excellently and given the whole essence of my paper. 

 ... I have had a, letter from a good zoologist in S. Brazil, 

 F. Miiller, who has been stirred up to observe climbers, and 

 gives me some curious cases of branch-climbers, in which 

 branches are converted into tendrils, and then continue to 

 grow and throw out leaves and new branches, and then lose 

 their tendril character." 



The paper on Climbing Plants was republished in 1875, 

 as a separate book. The author had been unable to give 

 hi3 customary amount of care to the style of the original 

 essay, owing to the fact that it was written during a period 

 of continued ill-health, and it was now found to require a 

 great deal of alteration. He wrote to Sir J. D. Hooker 

 (March 3, 1875) : " It is lucky for authors in general that 

 they do not require such dreadful work in merely licking 

 what they write into shape." And to Mr. Murray, in Sep- 

 tember, he wrote : " The corrections are heavy in Climbing 

 Plants, and yet I deliberately went over the MS. and old 

 sheets three times." The book was published in September 

 1875, an edition of 1500 copies was struck oil ; the edition 

 sold fairly well, and 500 additional copies were printed in 

 June of the following year. 



Tlie Power of Movement in Plants. 1880. 



The few sentences in the autobiographical chapter give 

 with sufficient clearness the connection between the Power 

 of Movement and the book on Climbing Plants. The cen- 

 tral idea of the book is that the movements of plants in 

 relation to light, gravitation, &c, are modifications of a 

 spontaneous tendency to revolve or circumnutate, which is 

 widely inherent in the growing parts of plants. This con- 

 ception has not been generally adopted, and has not taken 



* In the September number of Sillimari's Journal, concluded in the Janu- 

 ary number, 1866. 



