424 BOTANY [Chap. XI 



Letter 755 greatly, for I knew nothing about the terms as used in other 

 groups of plants. Could you not invent some quite new term 

 for gland, implying viscidity ? or append some word to gland. 

 I used for cirripedes " cement gland." 



Your present work must be frightfully difficult. I looked 

 at a few dried flowers, and could make neither heads nor 

 tails of them ; and I well remember wondering what you 

 would do with them when you came to the group in the 

 Genera Plantarum. I heartily wish you safe through your 

 work, . . . 



Letter 756 To F. M. Balfour. 1 



Down, Sept. 4th, 1880. 



I hope that you will not think me a great bore, but I have 

 this minute finished reading your address at the British Asso- 

 ciation 2 ; and it has interested me so much that I cannot resist 

 thanking you heartily for the pleasure derived from it, not to 

 mention the honour which you have done me. The recent 

 progress of embryology is indeed splendid. I have been very 

 stupid not to have hitherto read your book, 3 but I have had 

 of late no spare time ; I have now ordered it, and your 

 address will make it the more interesting to read, though I 

 fear that my want of knowledge will make parts unintelligible 

 to me. In my recent work on plants I have been astonished 

 to find to how many very different stimuli the same small 

 part — viz., the tip of the radicle — is sensitive, and has the 

 power of transmitting some influence to the adjoining part 

 of the radicle, exciting it to bend to or from the source of 

 irritation according to the needs of the plant 4 ; and all this 

 takes place without any nervous system ! I think that such 

 facts should be kept in mind when speculating on the genesis 

 of the nervous system. I always feel a malicious pleasure 

 when a priori conclusions are knocked on the head : and 

 therefore I felt somewhat like a devil when I read your 



1 Professor of Animal Morphology at Cambridge. He was born 

 185 1, and was killed, with his guide, on the Aiguille Blanche, near 

 Courmayeur, in July 1882. See Life and Letters, III., p. 250. 



2 Presidential address delivered by Prof. F. M. Balfour before the 

 Biological Section at the Brit. Assoc, meeting at Swansea (1880). 



3 A Treatise on Comparative Embryology, 2 vols. London, 1880. 



4 See Letter 757, p. 426. 



