I am sorry I made the ungallant mistake about Miss Lawless, but I had no means of knowing. If I had known I should not have written the letter, because I am almost sure the movements of the Medusa were accidental, and my pointing out this source of error may be discouraging to a lady observer.
I remember thinking you were too diffident about the bloom, but I suppose that is the advantage of experience; it keeps one from forming too high hopes at the first.
The rest of your letter contains glorious news. Cohn, I suppose, is about the best man in Europe to take up the subject, and although I cannot conceive what else he can do than Frank has done already, it is no doubt most desirable that his opinion should be formed by working at the problems himself.
The other item about the effects of feeding Drosera is really most important, and in particular about the starch. I have heard the doubts you allude to expressed in several quarters, but this will set them all at rest. It was just the one thing required to cap the work on insectivorous plants. What capital work Frank is doing!
I have nothing in the way of boasting to set off against it. The year has been a very bad one for jelly-fish, so that sometimes I have not been able to work at them for several days at a time. The most important new observation is perhaps the following.
Fig. 3.
Suppose a portion of Aurelia to be cut into the form of a pair of trousers, in such a way that a ganglion, a, occupies the bottom of one of the legs. Usually, of course, contractile waves starting from a course along to b, and thence round to c and backwards to d. But in one specimen I observed that every now and then the exact converse took place—viz. the contractile wave starting at d to course to c, b, and a. On now excising the ganglion at a both sets of contractile waves ceased—thus showing that even in the case where they started from d it was the ganglion at a which started them. This power on the part of Medusoid ganglia to discharge their influence at a distance from their own seat I have also observed in other forms of section, and it affords the best kind of evidence in favour of nerves.
On the days when I could get no jelly-fish I took to star-fish. I want, if possible, to make out the functions of the sand-canal and the aviculæ; but as yet I have only discovered the difficulties to be overcome. I had intended to make a cell to cover the calcareous plate at the end of the sand-canal, and to fill the cell with dye, in order to test Siebold's hypothesis that the whole apparatus is a filter for the ambulacral system; but Providence seems to have specially designed that no substance in creation should be adapted for sticking to the back of a starfish.