i86s 1866] CLIMBING PLANTS 343 



potting all minute reddish- coloured weeds. 1 I have just got Letter 667 

 a plant with sensitive axis, quite a new case ; and tell Oliver 

 I now do not care at all how many tendrils he makes axial, 

 which at one time was a cruel torture to me. 



To J. D. Hooker. L^ 668 



Down, Nov. 3rd [1864]. 



Many thanks for your splendid long letter. But first for 

 business. Please look carefully at the enclosed specimen of 

 Dicentra tJialictriformis? and throw away. When the plant 

 was young I concluded certainly that the tendrils were axial, 

 or modified branches, which Mohl 3 says is the case with some 

 Fumariaceae. You looked at them here and agreed. But 

 now the plant is old, what I thought was a branch with two 

 leaves and ending in a tendril looks like a gigantic leaf with 

 two compound leaflets, and the terminal part converted into 

 a tendril. For I see buds in the fork between supposed 

 branch and main stem. Pray look carefully you know I am 

 profoundly ignorant and save me from a horrid mistake. 



To J. D. Hooker. Letter 66g 



The following is interesting, as containing a foreshadowing of the 

 chemotaxis of antherozoids which was shown to exist by PfefTer in 1881 : 

 see Untersuchungen aus dem botanischen Institut zu Tubingen, Vol. I., 

 p. 363. There are several papers by H. J. Carter on the reproduction 

 of the lower organisms in the Annals and Magazine of Natural History 

 between 1855 and 1865. 



Down, Sunday, 22nd, and Saturday, 28th [October, 1865]. 



I have been wading through the Annals and Mag. of N. 

 Hist, for last ten years, and have been interested by several 

 papers, chiefly, however, translations ; but none have inter- 

 ested me more than Carter's on lower vegetables, infusoria, 

 and protozoa. Is he as good a workman as he appears? for 



1 We believe that the Adlumia which came up year by year in flower 

 boxes in the Down verandah grew from seed supplied by Asa Gray. 



2 Dicentra thalictrifolia, a Himalayan species of Fumariaceas, with 

 leaf-tendrils. 



3 Ueber den Bait und das Winden der Ranken und Schlingpflanzen. 

 Eine gekronte Preisschrift, 4to, Tubingen, 1827. At p. 43 Mohl describes 

 the tips of the branches of Fumaria \Corydalis\ daviculata as being 

 developed into tendrils, as well as the leaves. For this reason Darwin 

 placed the plant among the tendril-bearers rather than among the true 

 leaf-climbers : see Climbing Plants, Ed. n., 1875, P- I2I> 



