548 LETTERS TO DARWIN AND OTHERS. (1866, 
What do you intend for this summer? <A Conti- 
nental excursion ? 
Ever, my dear Bentham, most cordially yours, 
RAY. 
Dr. Farlow, in his memoir in “‘ Proceedings of the 
American Academy,” speaks of the great interest which 
Dr. Gray took at this time in observing tendrils and 
climbing plants. The glass corridor then connecting 
the herbarium and his study was very much occupied 
by climbers, and notes wer constantly taken of times of 
revolution, ete. He says, “ Dr. Sas hardly ever 
passed in or out of the herbarium without stroking 
(patting them on the back by way of encouraging them, 
it almost seemed) the tendrils of the climbers on the 
walls and porch; and on the announcement that 
a student had discovered another case of cross-fertil- 
ization in the garden, he would rush out bare-headed 
and _ breathless, like a schoolboy, to see the thing with 
his own critical eyes.” 
TO CHARLES DARWIN. 
May 7, 1866. 
I am so delighted to get a letter from you, written 
with your own hand, and to see that you can work 
again a little. 
I have no new facts about the influence of pollen 
on fruits, nor about influence of grafts. 
I have got a little plant of Bignonia capreolata 
growing here. I punched a lot of holes into the shady 
side of a lath; the tendrils thrust their ends in; also 
into a cornice, but did not stay ; either the movement 
of the stem or tendril, or, at length, the shortening 
of the body of the tendril by coiling, which it does 
