LETTER 616. TO J.D. HOOKER. Cliff Cottage, Bournemouth, Thursday Evening

[September 18th, 1862].

Thanks for your pleasant note, which told me much news, and upon the whole good, of yourselves. You will be awfully busy for a time, but I write now to say that if you think it really worth while to send me a few Dielytra, or other Fumariaceous plant (which I have already tried in vain to find here) in a little tin box, I will try and trace the vessels; but please observe, I do not know that I shall have time, for I have just become wonderfully interested in experimenting on Drosera with poisons, etc. If you send any Fumariaceous plant, send if you can, also two or three single balsams. After writing to you, I looked at vessels of ovary of a sweet-pea, and from this and other cases I believe that in the ovary the midrib vessel alone gives homologies, and that the vessels on the edge of the carpel leaf often run into the wrong bundle, just like those on the sides of the sepals. Hence I [suppose] in Crucifers that the ovarium consists of two pistils; AA [Figure 12] being the midrib vessels, and BB being those formed of the vessels on edges of the two carpels, run together, and going to wrong bundles. I came to this conclusion before receiving your letter.

I wonder why Asa Gray will not believe in the quaternary arrangement; I had fancied that you saw some great difficulty in the case, and that made me think that my notion must be wrong.