158 THE PEESIDENCY OF THE EOYAL SOCIETY 



The Address is a sort of rambling statement of the 

 history of Dionaea and Sarracenia and Drosera up to your 

 time, ending with Burdon Sanderson. I shall not touch your 

 ground, but refer to you. I then go straight to Sarracenia 

 and Nepenthes, and shall just touch on Cephalotus, and wind 

 up with some generalities on absorption and nutrition by 

 plants in general. 



Dyer has helped me enormously, and indeed I could not 

 but for him either have got through the work or done it half 

 so well. He catches over ideas and anticipates one's wants 

 wonderfully, and I really feel that he should share whatever 

 credit the historical part and general conclusions may get. 



At the Belfast meeting of the British Association in 1874 

 the Hookers tried to arrange that the members of the x Club 

 and their wives (x's + yv's) should club together as a single 

 group ; but the pleasant plan could not be carried out. Hooker 

 did not take any active part in the hubbub that followed Prof. 

 Tyndall's Presidential Address, which fluttered the theological 

 dovecotes ; his only reference to the meeting is in a letter to 

 Darwin (August 22 or 29) : ' Lubbock's Lecture x went off 

 admirably, but Huxley's 2 was the magnum opus of the meeting. 

 It was a most capital meeting.' 



The same letter contains a reference to protective changes 

 of colour in animals. His correspondent wrote from South 

 Africa. 



The enclosed have just arrived from Mrs. Barber. Her 

 clever suggestion of the colour being as it were photographed 

 reminds me that Grove ages ago told me that he had seen 

 dead Fish take the colour of an adjacent object, I forget 

 what, but it was after the manner of a photograph. 



The Papilio reminds me of my Indian Tick or Lizard, 

 which I have never quite persuaded myself to believe in till 

 now ! ! ! I remember telling you of the grasshoppers on 

 Mt. Lebanon which were grey on grey rocks and greener and 

 browner on other situations. 



1 On ' British Wild Flowers Considered in Relation to Insects.' 



2 On the ' Hypothesis that Animals are Automata, and its History.' Coll. 



