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Nov. 25 to 27. 1877

A very pleasant visit at Down ─ C.D in particular force his own health: the return of the Litchfields, she looking very well & he promising for total recovery:¹ and W. Ds marriage all made the house very cheerful.² Francis Galton there & interesting. C.D was out hour by hour from 7.30 till dark walking slowly to his greenhouse alone ─ with straw hat and short cloak ─ eyes on ground ─ taking measurements of movements of plants which now occupy him. "They say plants are distinguished from animals by want of motion." "By Jove"! he says ─ I believe at the beginning they have quite as much movement as animals, and afterwards lose what they don't want."³ He was full of talk on all sorts of subjects ─ but chiefly scientific ─ much pleased with George Darwin's doings on the tides in the interior of the earth and with the notion that they may have afforded a source of heat, thus reconciling Sir W. Thomson & other geologists.

We talked of contagion of acclimatization to venomous bites & stings: and of people who get used to mosquitos & to bee stings. by He suggested that mentioned Pagets notion that the venom in these cases affects all the blood in the body and suggested the analogy of "fairy-rings" when the fungus, growing outwards from a centre, exhausts the ground of what supports the fungus, & thus leaves a place in the centre where no fungus will grow. In the

¹ Richard Buckley Litchfield had been ill since September when in Switzerland.

² William Darwin and Sarah Sedgwick would marry on 29 November 1877.

³ This statement is very similar to how Darwin concluded his recent book on climbing plants: "It has often been vaguely asserted that plants are distinguished from animals by not having the power of movement. It should rather be said that plants acquire and display this power only when it is of some advantage to them; this being of comparatively rare occurrence, as they are affixed to the ground, and food is brought to them by the air and rain." Darwin, C. R. 1875. The movements and habits of climbing plants. 2d ed., p. 206.

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same way, he thought, contag venom may exhaust in time whatever in the body is capable of being affected by it. The characteristic thing was that he spoke of it simply as an analogy — which might prove to be quite false.⁴

His extreme cheerfulness and cordiality: the readiness to accept chaff come by his own hobbies, which Effie did not spare him: and his apparently modest acceptance of anything any body has to give him, astonish me more than ever ─ At the same time there is a certain ─ "Ah indeed"! with which he receives a new fact or assertion which may cover a great deal of incredulity & sarcasm.

In purely literary talk, [illeg] come by facts. Miss Wynns news &c he does not join much — but is deeply interested in present politics, & vehemently anti-Turk — and anti-John Bull. He joined heartily in condemning E. Dicey on Egypt.— "very good for Egypt — very bad for this country."⁵ The latter was good — better than usual — Art decoration. — spreading even into that house — where it certainly was not much of a feature. Much substantial comfort — but few [prettinesses] — & absolutely no shew = The want in the house is privacy: but this does not apply to C.D. Every thing is done to favour his work. He comes in & chats when & as long as he likes — sometimes too long. & Mrs. D. says severely "Charles, when do you think of going to bed." or "when

⁴ Darwin wrote to J. Burdon Sanderson on 16 July 1875: "Having been in correspondence with Paget lately on another subject, I mentioned to him an analogy which has struck me much, now that we know that sheep-pox is fungoid; and this analogy pleased him. It is that of fairy rings, which are believed to spread from a centre, and when they intersect the intersecting portion dies out, as the mycelium cannot grow where it has grown during previous years. So, again, I have never seen a ring within a ring; this seems to me a parallel case to a man commonly having the smallpox only once. I imagine that in both cases the mycelium must consume all the matter on which it can subsist." More letters 2: 444. Mycelium a network of fungal threads. Darwin's letter to Paget about this is lost, however Paget replied on 7 July 1875: "I am charmed with your suggestion that fairy-rings illustrate the insusceptibility of soils,—whether bloods, tissues, or earths—that have been once infected". Correspondence vol. 23, p. 255. See James Paget, Lectures on surgical pathology, 1853.

⁵ Edward Dicey, (1832-1911) was a journalist who had recently published articles advocating the occupation of Egypt by Britain, to secure the Suez canal and access to India. See Dicey, The future of Egypt. The Nineteenth Century, 2 (August 1877): 3-14.

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do you mean to have done talking"! upon which he generally retires — Effie chaffed him more than usual — declining to notice the pet baby: and saying "Uncle Charles I am thinking whether I shall try to read one of your books"! — to which he ultimately replies — "Good bye Mrs Impudence."—

It was like him to go back on our old Coronilla. He says Müller writes to him from S. America that there a plant — one of the Malpighiaceæ in which the insect sits on the flower so as to fertilize it and gnaws off certain glands on the outside of the calyx, just as the bee or Cor. varia sits stands on the keel & puts his proboscis through the opening before the petals & sweeps the juice exuding from the outside of the calyx.⁶

⁶ "Mr. Farrer has also shown† that the flowers of Coronilla are curiously modified, so that bees may fertilise them whilst sucking the fluid secreted from the outside of the calyx. † 'Nature' 1874 page 169." Darwin, C. R. 1876. The effects of cross and self fertilisation in the vegetable kingdom, p. 405. http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=422&itemID=F1249