304 THE LIFE OF PHILIP HENRY GOSSE, 



"cells, called by Brown utrlculi : these I find never 

 " present in viscid matter of rostellum ; and when these 

 " parts are close, it is important to distinguish them. 

 " You could have then probably told whether the fluid 

 "which exuded from your decaying flowers was a true 

 " stigmatic secretion. I heartily hope your pretty little 

 " discovery will prove good and true. 

 " My dear sir, 



" Yours very sincerely, 



" C. Darwin." 



A month later my father notes that he has been busy 

 " examining bee orchis for Darwin at Petit Tor," and send- 

 ing him notes and drawings on Cyancea. Another interest- 

 ing correspondence this autumn was with Lady Dorothy 

 Nevill, who supplied him with ailanthus plants, and with 

 a brood of caterpillars of Bombyx Cyiit/da, the exquisite 

 Indian silkworm moth, whose sickle-shaped wings of clear 

 apple-green, marked with pink moons and scimitars, 

 emerged in due time, to our infinite delight, from cocoons 

 of the pale Tussore silk. But in the next chapter I shall 

 dwell more at length on the am.ateur pleasures which now 

 began to absorb my father's extended leisure. 



In the course of 1864 my father collected some old 

 papers and revised them, destining them to form a volume 

 which he presently published under the title of Land and 

 Sea. Of this book the first hundred pages were well 

 worthy of preservation ; they contained the record of the 

 author's stay twelve years previously on the picturesque 

 island of Lundy, in the Bristol Channel. But some of the 

 other sketches were rather trivial and diffusely told, besides 

 possessing the disadvantage that they seemed like discarded 

 chapters from other books, which indeed they were — The 

 Ocean, A Naturalises Sojourn in Jamaica, and A Year 



