I have, also, been working too hard lately, and with very little success, so that I am going to leave home for a time and try to forget science.
I quite expect that you will find some gross errors in my work, for you are a very much more skilful and profound experimentalist than I am. Although I always am endeavouring to be cautious and to mistrust myself, yet I know well how apt I am to make blunders. Physiology, both animal and vegetable, is so difficult a subject, that it seems to me to progress chiefly by the elimination or correction of ever-recurring mistakes. I hope that you will not have upset my fundamental notion that various classes of movement result from the modification of a universally present movement of circumnutation.
I am very glad that you will again discuss the view of the turgescence of the cells being the cause of the movement of parts. I adopted De Vries' views as seeming to me the most probable, but of late I have felt more doubts on this head. (763/2. See "Power of Movement," page 2. De Vries' work is published in the "Bot. Zeitung," 1879, page 830.)
LETTER 764. TO J.D. HOOKER. Glenrhydding House, Patterdale, Penrith, June 15th, 1881.
It was real pleasure to me to see once again your well-known handwriting on the outside of your note. I do not know how long you have returned from Italy, but I am very sorry that you are so bothered already with work and visits. I cannot but think that you are too kind and civil to visitors, and too conscientious about your official work. But a man cannot cure his virtues, any more than his vices, after early youth; so you must bear your burthen. It is, however, a great misfortune for science that you have so very little spare time for the "Genera." I can well believe what an awful job the palms must be. Even their size must be very inconvenient. You and Bentham must hate the monocotyledons, for what work the Orchideae must have been, and Gramineae and Cyperaceae will be. I am rather despondent about myself, and my troubles are of an exactly opposite nature to yours, for idleness is downright misery to me, as I find here, as I cannot forget my discomfort for an hour. I have not the heart or strength at my age to begin any investigation lasting years, which is the only thing which I enjoy; and I have no little jobs which I can do. So I must look forward to Down graveyard as the sweetest place on earth. This place is magnificently beautiful, and I enjoy the scenery, though weary of it; and the weather has been very cold and almost always hazy.
I am so glad that your tour has answered for Lady Hooker. We return home on the first week of July, and should be truly glad to aid Lady Hooker in any possible manner which she will suggest.
I have written to my gardener to send you plants of Oxalis corniculata (and seeds if possible). I should think so common a weed was never asked for before,--and what a poor return for the hundreds of plants which I have received from Kew! I hope that I have not bothered you by writing so long a note, and I did not intend to do so.
If Asa Gray has returned with you, please give him my kindest remembrances.
LETTER 765. TO J.D. HOOKER. October 22nd, 1881.
I am investigating the action of carbonate of ammonia on chlorophyll, which makes me want the plants in my list. (765/1. "The Action of Carbonate of Ammonia on Chlorophyll Bodies." "Linn. Soc. Journ." XIX., page 262, 1882.) I have incidentally observed one point in Euphorbia, which has astonished me--viz. that in the fine fibrous roots of Euphorbia, the alternate rows of cells in their roots must differ physiologically, though not in external appearance, as their contents after the action of carbonate of ammonia differ most conspicuously...
Wiesner of Vienna has just published a book vivisecting me in the most courteous, but awful manner, about the "Power of Movement in Plants." (765/2. See Letter 763, note.) Thank heaven, he admits almost all my facts, after re-trying all my experiments; but gives widely different interpretation of the facts.