64 GEOEGE JOHN EOMANES i87f.- 



in the way of conducting tissue than in Drosera, 

 although I confess it is most astonishing how precise 

 the locahsing function, as described by you, is in the 

 latter. In ' Nature ' I did not express my doubts, 

 but it was because I feared there may yet turn out to 

 be a skeleton in the cupboard that I kept all these 

 more or less fishy deductions out of the K.S. papers. 

 Purther work may perhaps make the matter more 

 certain one way or another. Possibly the microscope 

 may show something, and so I have asked Schafer to 

 come down, who, as I know from experience, is what 

 spiritualists call ' a sensitive ' — I mean he can see 

 ghosts of things where other people can't. But still, 

 if he can make out anything in the jelly of Aurelia, I 

 shall confess it to be the best case of clairvoyance I 

 ever knew. 



I am very glad you have drawn my attention 

 prominently to the localising function in Drosera, as 

 it is very likely I have been too keen in my scent 

 after nerves ; and I believe it is chiefly by comparing 

 lines of work that in such novel phenomena truth is 

 to be got at. And this reminds me of an observation 

 which I think ought to be made on some of the 

 excitable plants. It is a fact not generally known, 

 even to professed physiologists, that if you pass a 

 constant current through an excised muscle two or 

 three times successively in the same direction, the 

 responses to make and break become much more 

 feeble than at first, so that unless you began with a 

 strong current for the first of the series, you have to 

 strengthen it for the third or fourth of the series in 

 order to procure a contraction. But on now reversing 



