64 



MY LIFE 



[Chaf. 



and could hardly believe I wrote it, should have been the 

 means of attracting one good botanist to read it with atten- 

 tion, and thus probably to make a convert. 



A letter from Spruce, dated Welburn, Yorkshire, Decem- 

 ber 28, 1873, gives some interesting matter on a botanical 

 subject on which I had consulted him. 



"My article on the modifications in plant-structure pro- 

 duced by the agency of ants was never printed. After I 

 had been told that the MSS. was in the printer's hands, it 

 was returned to me with the request that I would strike out 

 of it two or three short passages, amounting altogether to 

 hardly a page of the Linncsan Journal, I declined to do 

 this, for the obnoxious passages summarized my views on 

 the permanent effects produced on certain species of plants 

 by the unceasing operations of ants, extending doubtless 

 through thousands of ages ; and these views were founded on 

 observations continued during eight consecutive years. The 

 bare reading of the paper, at the Linnaean, seems to have left 

 a very erroneous impression on some of the auditors. Some- 

 body — I believe it was at a meeting of your own Entomo- 

 logical Society — has credited me with the theory that plants 

 take to climbing to get out of the way of the ants ! As I 

 read this absurd statement I thought that none of the plants 

 I had commented on had a climbing habit ; but on looking 

 over the list of two or three hundred species, I find there is 

 a single one that climbs. 



" When you go to the British Museum or to the Kew 

 Herbarium, ask to look at the genus Tococa or Myrmidone, in 

 Melastomaceae, and you will see examples of the curious sacs 

 on the leaves which are inhabited by ants. Similar sacs are 

 found on the leaves also of certain Chrysobalaneae, Rubiaceae, 

 etc., and analogous ones on the branches of cordias and 

 other plants. I believe that in many cases these sacs have 

 become inherited structures — as much as the spurs of orchids 

 and columbines, and thousands of other asymetrical struc- 

 tures, all of which I suppose to have originated in some long 

 continued external agency. 



" I know that I ought to have gone carefully over all my 



