Well, we are longing to do it again, and more! But I am settling down to my work as well as I may, well content with the summer’s holiday.
December 2, 1872.
Well, it is wonderful, your finding the nervous system of Dionæa!!! Pray take your time next spring, and do up both Drosera and Dionæa. I will endeavor next spring to get hold of Drosera filiformis and make the observations. I will also do better, by sending your note on to Mr. Canby, who lives near its habitat, and has done something already in such observations.
As to coiling of tendril. I think your idea is that in the coiling of a fixed tendril, one coil has its concave side the opposite of the part that has coiled the other way.
Now take a piece of tape say a span long; black one side, let some one hold the two ends while you twist in the middle. The two halves are coiled in opposite directions, just as a tendril which has caught does. The same color will be on the outside of the coil all the length.
Blacken with a stroke of paint a line along the whole length of a caught tendril. On straightening it out the black will be all on one side.
I have not had time to follow it up, and need not, since you are sure to do it. But I think it clear that one and the same side is concave, that is, the relatively shortened side, the whole length of the caught tendril. Do not you?
Mrs. Gray is absent while I write, or she would add her best regards and best wishes to my own for a happy New Year to you all.
TO C. W. ELIOT.
Botanic Garden, Cambridge, January 1, 1873.