i863— 1866] CLIMBING PLANTS 343 



potting all minute reddish-coloured weeds. 1 I have jus net 667 



a plant with sensitive axis, quite a new ; and tell OH 1 



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

 which at one time was a cruel torture to me. 



To J. D. Hooker. Lelter 668 



Down, Nov. 3rd [1864]. 

 Many thanks for your splendid long letter. Hut first for 

 business. Please look carefully at the enclosed specimen 

 Dicentra tkalictriformis* 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 

 Fumariacc You looked at them here and agreed. Hut 



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 ^ 



The following is interesting, as containing a foreshadowing of the 

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

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



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

 of the lower organisms in the Annals and Magazine < \ \tural History 

 between 1855 and 1865. 



Down, Sunday, 22nd, and Saturday. 2Sth [October, 1865]. 

 I have been wading through the Annals and Ma V. 



I list, 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? 



' We believe that the Ad .Inch came up year by year in flower 



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



3 Dicentra tlialictrifolia, a Himalayan species of Fumariacese, with 

 leaf-tendrils. 



3 Ueber den Pan it ml das Winder, der .7 ••>/. 



Eine gekrbnte Preisi 4to, Tubingen, 1827. At p. 43 Mohl describes 



the tips of the branches of Fumaria \Corydalis\ da is being 



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

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

 leaf-climbers : see Climbing Plants, Ed. II., 1S75, p. 121. 



