[pages] 239-240

I was very proud of my garden, in which most of the distinguished botanists and biologists of that day, including Sir Joseph Hooker and Charles Darwin, took a great interest.

In my greenhouses I had at one time a large collection of insectivorous plants, specimens of which I used occasionally to send to Mr. Darwin, who carried on a correspondence with me about these curious things, in which he was very much interested. I went once to pay him a visit at his house at Down, in Kent, but unluckily found him suffering from one of those attacks from which he perpetually suffered, he having never perfectly recovered from the terrible sea-sickness which tortured him during his voyage on the Beagle. In consequence of his indisposition I was only able to talk to him for a short while, but, nevertheless, he told me a great deal about the digestive powers of the secretion of the drosera or sun-dew, which, as he had actually proved by experiment, acted upon albuminous compounds in exactly the same manner as does the gastric juice of mammals.