LETTER 734. TO W. THISELTON-DYER. 6, Queen Anne Street {December 1876}.
Tell Hooker I feel greatly aggrieved by him: I went to the Royal Society to see him for once in the chair of the Royal, to admire his dignity and enjoy it, and lo and behold, he was not there. My outing gave me much satisfaction, and I was particularly glad to see Mr. Bentham, and to see him looking so wonderfully well and young. I saw lots of people, and it has not done me a penny's worth of harm, though I could not get to sleep till nearly four o'clock.
LETTER 735. TO D. OLIVER. Down, October, 13th {1876?}.
You must be a clair-voyant or something of that kind to have sent me such useful plants. Twenty-five years ago I described in my father's garden two forms of Linum flavum (thinking it a case of mere variation); from that day to this I have several times looked, but never saw the second form till it arrived from Kew. Virtue is never its own reward: I took paper this summer to write to you to ask you to send me flowers, {so} that I might beg plants of this Linum, if you had the other form, and refrained, from not wishing to trouble you. But I am now sorry I did, for I have hardly any doubt that L. flavum never seeds in any garden that I have seen, because one form alone is cultivated by slips. (735/1. Id est, because, the plant being grown from slips, one form alone usually occurs in any one garden. It is also arguable that it is grown by slips because only one form is common, and therefore seedlings cannot be raised.)
(736/1. The following five letters refer to Darwin's work on "bloom"—a subject on which he did not live to complete his researches:—
One of his earliest letters on this subject was addressed in August, 1873, to Sir Joseph Hooker (736/2. Published in "Life and Letters," III., page 339.):
"I want a little information from you, and if you do not yourself know, please to enquire of some of the wise men of Kew.
"Why are the leaves and fruit of so many plants protected by a thin layer of waxy matter (like the common cabbage), or with fine hair, so that when such leaves or fruit are immersed in water they appear as if encased in thin glass? It is really a pretty sight to put a pod of the common pea, or a raspberry, into water. I find several leaves are thus protected on the under surface and not on the upper.
"How can water injure the leaves, if indeed this is at all the case?"
On this latter point Darwin wrote to the late Lord Farrer: