The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online

RECORD: Darwin, C. R. 1875.04.21. Digestion of chlorophyll. CUL-DAR59.2.95. Edited by John van Wyhe (Darwin Online, http://darwin-online.org.uk/)

REVISION HISTORY: Transcribed by Christine Chua and edited by John van Wyhe 11.2021. RN1

NOTE: See record in the Darwin Online manuscript catalogue, enter its Identifier here. Reproduced with permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library and William Huxley Darwin. The volumes CUL-DAR 54-61 contain material for Darwin's book Insectivorous plants (1875).

[95]

Ap 21. 75

Digestion of Chlorophyll

Thin sections of spinach leaf were placed slightly moistened with saliva & placed in the discs of several leaves at 5.15. PM.

Similar sections were placed on moist cotton wool & put close to the plates of Drosera in the hot-house

Ap 22 - 12.30 PM - ie. 19h

Examined a leaf which was still clasping its morsel of spinach. The latter was thoroughly soaking with secretion so no drying of its tissues could possibly have taken place.

The perfect chlorophyll bodies left: they are seen shrunken, & altered to a yellowish green colour & collected in heaps in the middles of the cells; or else a disintegrating yellowish granular mass is seen occupying the middles of the cells.

The ones on cotton wool show green unshrunken chlorophyll bodies which are not collected into disintegrating mass, but occupy their normal position in the cell

Citation: John van Wyhe, ed. 2002-. The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online. (http://darwin-online.org.uk/)