The course of the side vessels in the sepals is curious, just like my difficulty in Habenaria. (615/2. See Letter 605.) I am surprised at the four vessels in the ovarium. Can this indicate four confluent pistils? anyhow, they are in the right alternating position. The nectary within the base of the shorter stamens seems to cause the end sepals apparently, but not really, to arise beneath the lateral sepals.
I think you will understand my diagrams in five minutes, so forgive me for bothering you. My writing this to you reminds me of a letter which I received yesterday from Claparede, who helped the French translatress of the "Origin" (615/3. The late Mlle. Royer.), and he tells me he had difficulty in preventing her (who never looked at a bee's cell) from altering my whole description, because she affirmed that an hexagonal prism must have an hexagonal base! Almost everywhere in the "Origin," when I express great doubt, she appends a note explaining the difficulty, or saying that there is none whatever!! (615/4. See "Life and Letters," II., page 387.) It is really curious to know what conceited people there are in the world (people, for instance, after looking at one Cruciferous flower, explain their homologies).
This is a nice, but most barren country, and I can find nothing to look at. Even the brooks and ponds produce nothing. The country is like Patagonia. my wife is almost well, thank God, and Leonard is wonderfully improved ...Good God, what an illness scarlet fever is! The doctor feared rheumatic fever for my wife, but she does not know her risk. It is now all over.
(FIGURE 12.)
LETTER 616. TO J.D. HOOKER. Cliff Cottage, Bournemouth, Thursday Evening [September 18th, 1862].
Thanks for your pleasant note, which told me much news, and upon the whole good, of yourselves. You will be awfully busy for a time, but I write now to say that if you think it really worth while to send me a few Dielytra, or other Fumariaceous plant (which I have already tried in vain to find here) in a little tin box, I will try and trace the vessels; but please observe, I do not know that I shall have time, for I have just become wonderfully interested in experimenting on Drosera with poisons, etc. If you send any Fumariaceous plant, send if you can, also two or three single balsams. After writing to you, I looked at vessels of ovary of a sweet-pea, and from this and other cases I believe that in the ovary the midrib vessel alone gives homologies, and that the vessels on the edge of the carpel leaf often run into the wrong bundle, just like those on the sides of the sepals. Hence I [suppose] in Crucifers that the ovarium consists of two pistils; AA [Figure 12] being the midrib vessels, and BB being those formed of the vessels on edges of the two carpels, run together, and going to wrong bundles. I came to this conclusion before receiving your letter.
I wonder why Asa Gray will not believe in the quaternary arrangement; I had fancied that you saw some great difficulty in the case, and that made me think that my notion must be wrong.
LETTER 617. TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, September 27th [1862].
Masdevallia turns out nothing wonderful (617/1. This may refer to the homologies of the parts. He was unable to understand the mechanism of the flower.--"Fertilisation of Orchids," Edition II., page 136.); I was merely stupid about it; I am not the less obliged for its loan, for if I had lived till 100 years old I should have been uneasy about it. It shall be returned the first day I send to Bromley. I have steamed the other plants, and made the sensitive plant very sensitive, and shall soon try some experiments on it. But after all it will only be amusement. Nevertheless, if not causing too much trouble, I should be very glad of a few young plants of this and Hedysarum in summer (617/2. Hedysarum or Desmodium gyrans, the telegraph-plant.), for this kind of work takes no time and amuses me much. Have you seeds of Oxalis sensitiva, which I see mentioned in books? By the way, what a fault it is in Henslow's "Botany" that he gives hardly any references; he alludes to great series of experiments on absorption of poison by roots, but where to find them I cannot guess. Possibly the all-knowing Oliver may know.