Can we get any from Wilmington now? Are there any near Dr. Mellichamp? You may forward Darwin’s last letter to him and set him to observing,—collecting and preserving leaves with insects stuck fast, and margin turned over. See if ours turn over the edge!
How does D. find out they digest?
July 14.
When Dionæa is irritated by a small fly, he has plenty of time to escape through the meshes, and the leaf soon opens, ready for better luck next time. Think what a waste if the leaf had to go through all the process of secretion, etc., taking so much time, all for a little gnat. It would not pay. Yet it would have to do it except for this arrangement to let the little flies escape. But when a bigger one is caught he is sure for a good dinner.
That is real Darwin. I just wonder you and never thought of it. But he did.
Pretty good,—the solar protector! So Fendler is near you. Remember me to the good fellow.
I wish he had let Cosmical Science alone! But now he never will, and is a gone goose.
Ever yours,
A. Gray.
Dr. Gray, being sent away for a cough, made a journey to Apalachicola, Florida, going by Washington, Augusta and Tallahassee, of which and his successful search for Torreya he wrote a lively account for the “American Agriculturist,” republished in his “Scientific Papers,” selected by C. S. Sargent.
He was especially interested in seeing Torreya, a fine tree named for his friend Dr. Torrey, which is only known in one or two localities in Florida, on the banks of the Apalachicola River; and with some trouble he found it growing, and had the satisfaction of hoping that it was valued enough to be preserved. There is a second Torreya growing in Japan, a third Torreya in California, and a fourth in China. “But,” as Dr. Gray says, “any species of very restricted range may be said to hold its existence by a precarious tenure. The known range of this species is not more than a dozen miles in length along these bluffs, although Dr. Chapman has heard of its growing farther south, where the bluff trends away from the river.”