BOTANY [CHAP. XI 



Letter 733 It was very foolish of me to demur to your lines of con- 

 veyance like the threads in muslin, 1 knowing how you have 

 considered the subject : but still I must confess I cannot feel 

 quite easy. Everyone, I suppose, thinks on what he has 

 himself seen, and with Drosera, a bit of meat put on any one 

 gland on its disc causes all the surrounding tentacles to bend 

 to this point, and here there can hardly be differentiated lines 

 of conveyance. It seems to me that the tentacles probably 

 bend to that point wherever a molecular wave strikes them, 

 which passes through the cellular tissue with equal case in all 

 directions in this particular case. 2 But what a fine case that 

 of the Aurelia is ! 3 



Letter 734 To W. Thiselton-Dyer. 



6, Queen Anne Street [Dec. 1876]. 



Tell Hooker I feel greatly aggrieved by him : I went to 

 the Royal Society to see him for once in the chair of the 

 Royal, to admire his dignity and enjoy it, and lo and behold, 

 he was not there. My outing gave me much satisfaction, and 

 I was particularly glad to see Mr. Bentham, and to see him 

 looking so wonderfully well and young. I saw lots of people, 

 and it has not done me a penny's worth of harm, though I 

 could not get to sleep till nearly four o'clock. 



Letter 735 To D. Oliver. 



Down, Oct. 1 3th [1876?]. 



You must be a clair-voyant or something of that kind to 

 have sent me such useful plants. Twenty-five years ago I 

 described in my father's garden two forms of Linum flavum 

 (thinking it a case of mere variation) ; from that day to this 

 I have several times looked, but never saw the second form 

 till it arrived from Kew. Virtue is never its own reward : I 

 took paper this summer to write to you to ask you to send 

 me flowers, [so] that I might beg plants of this Linum, if you 

 had the other form, and refrained, from not wishing to trouble 

 you. But I am now sorry I did, for I have hardly any doubt 



1 Nature^ Aug. 2nd, p. 271. 



2 Speaking generally, the transmission takes place more readily in 

 the longitudinal direction than across the leaf : see Insectivorous Pla?its, 

 p. 239. 



3 Aurelia aurita, one of the medusas. Nature, pp. 269-71. 



