Chapter 425

I have had real pleasure in signing Dyer's certificate. (755/1. As a candidate for the Royal Society.) It was very kind in you to write to me about the Orchideae, for it has pleased me to an extreme degree that I could have been of the least use to you about the nature of the parts. They are wonderful creatures, these orchids, and I sometimes think with a glow of pleasure, when I remember making out some little point in their method of fertilisation. (755/2. Published in "Life and Letters," III., page 288.) With respect to terms, no doubt you will be able to improve them greatly, for I knew nothing about the terms as used in other groups of plants. Could you not invent some quite new term for gland, implying viscidity? or append some word to gland. I used for cirripedes "cement gland."

Your present work must be frightfully difficult. I looked at a few dried flowers, and could make neither heads nor tails of them; and I well remember wondering what you would do with them when you came to the group in the "Genera Plantarum." I heartily wish you safe through your work,...