Letter 687.), which turns up its leaves on the wrong side, is most

extraordinary and ought to be further investigated. Do the leaflets sleep on the following night in the usual manner? Do the same leaflets on successive nights move in the same strange manner? I was particularly glad to hear of the strongly marked cases of paraheliotropism. I shall look out with much interest for the publication about the figs. (688/3. F. Muller published on Caprification in "Kosmos," 1882.) The creatures which you sketch are marvellous, and I should not have guessed that they were hymenoptera. Thirty or forty years ago I read all that I could find about caprification, and was utterly puzzled. I suggested to Dr. Cruger in Trinidad to investigate the wild figs, in relation to their cross-fertilisation, and just before he died he wrote that he had arrived at some very curious results, but he never published, as I believe, on the subject.

I am extremely glad that the inundation did not so greatly injure your scientific property, though it would have been a real pleasure to me to have been allowed to have replaced your scientific apparatus. (688/4. See Letter 687.) I do not believe that there is any one in the world who admires your zeal in science and wonderful powers of observation more than I do. I venture to say this, as I feel myself a very old man, who probably will not last much longer.

P.S.--With respect to Phyllanthus, I think that it would be a good experiment to cut off most of the leaflets on one side of the petiole, as soon as they are asleep and vertically dependent; when the pressure is thus removed, the opposite leaflets will perhaps bend beyond their vertically dependent position; if not, the main petiole might be a little twisted so that the upper surfaces of the dependent and now unprotected leaflets should face obliquely the sky when the morning comes. In this case diaheliotropism would perhaps conquer the ordinary movements of the leaves when they awake, and [assume] their diurnal horizontal position. As the leaflets are alternate, and as the upper surface will be somewhat exposed to the dawning light, it is perhaps diaheliotropism which explains your extraordinary case.