64 GEOEGE JOHN EOMANES 1876- 



Not having heard his arguments about the article- 

 writing, I am still strongly of your opinion, and, being 

 besides ill able to afford any time just now, I shall 

 not bother with it. When I think that in this one 

 county (Ross, and still more in Cromarty) there are 

 more rabbits expressly bred every year for trapping 

 than could be vivisected in all the physiological 

 laboratories in Europe during the next thousand 

 years, it seems hopeless to reason with people who, 

 knowing such facts, expend all their energies in 

 straining at a wonderfully small gnat, while swallow- 

 ing, as an article of daily food, such an enormously 

 large camel. 



From C. Darwin, Esq. 



Down : August 10. 



Dear Eomanes, — When I wrote yesterday, I had 

 not received to-day's ' Nature,' and I thought that 

 your lecture was finished. This final part is one of 

 the grandest essays which I ever read. 



It was very foolish of me to demur to your lines 

 of conveyance like the threads in muslin, knowing how 

 youhave considered the subject, but still I must confess 

 1 cannot feel quite easy. Every one, I suppose, thinks 

 on what he has himself seen, and with Drosera, a bit 

 of meat put on any one gland on the disc causes all 

 the surrounding tentacles to bend to this point ; and 

 here there can hardly be differentiated lines of convey- 

 ance. It seems to me that the tentacles probably 

 bend to that point whence a molecular wave strikes 

 them, which passes through the cellular tissue with 



