156 THE PEESIDENCY OF THE KOYAL SOCIETY 



make a point of now going on all other duties social, 

 scientific, and parental notwithstanding. 



Any hints for observations most gratefully received. 

 I note carefully what I do. 



July 15. I am at fibrin to-day. Michael Foster suggests 

 that coagulation of protoplasm may be diseased not digestive 

 symptom, and advises my trying effect of citric acid in 

 pitchers. 



July 18. Have you any objection to my giving an outline 

 of what is published of your Drosera observations at the Bel- 

 fast meeting ? I have to give an Address, and would like to 

 make a resume of the Pitcher plant results the back-bone 

 of it, stating that they were wholly undertaken under your 

 auspices and apropos of your Drosera experiments. 



If you have the smallest objection to either Nepenthes 

 or Drosera being described pray say so, as I would rather 

 send you all Nepenthes matter for you to append or in- 

 corporate, than appear to filch. 



We had such a night at the Mozart Festival at Co vent 

 Garden. I was carried away with Albani's ' Dove sono,' 

 and felt it up and down my back as when we were at New 

 College Chapel, Oxford, in 1847. I could not help my eyes 

 watering. I thought I had never heard anything so beautiful 

 since Malibran in 1837. Patti I cannot get up sympathy 

 or enthusiasm for she fails to satisfy me. 



July 22. I am stupefied by the trouble you have taken, 

 and your kindness. What you have sent was not in the 

 least wanted apropos of Belfast, but will be enormously 

 useful in my work on these pitcher plants, &c. 



As to Belfast, all I wanted was your assurance that a 

 mention of what has been published in Nature &c. of your 

 observations on Drosera and Dionaea, would not interfere 

 with your book, and that my giving a resume of my Nepenthes 

 observations would not look like forestalling your far more 

 important work. 



The Brit. Assn. Sections are all trying to get for Belfast 

 Meeting more brief reports of what is doing in each branch 

 of Science, and the direction in which research therein is 

 tending. I thought of making carnivorous plants my share 

 of this work ; and giving it as my Address as Pres. of Sub- 

 section Bot. and Zool. I thought of introducing it by a 



