ying that there is none whatever!! (615/4. See
"Life and Letters," II., page 387.) It is really curious to know what
conceited people there are in the world (people, for instance, after
looking at one Cruciferous flower, explain their homologies).

This is a nice, but most barren country, and I can find nothing to
look at. Even the brooks and ponds produce nothing. The country is like
Patagonia. my wife is almost well, thank God, and Leonard is wonderfully
improved ...Good God, what an illness scarlet fever is! The doctor
feared rheumatic fever for my wife, but she does not know her risk. It
is now all over.

(FIGURE 12.)

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.

LETTER 617. TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, September 27th [1862].

Masdevallia turns out nothing wonderful (617/1. This may refer to the
homologies of the parts. He was unable to understand the mechanism of
the flower.--"Fertilisation of Orchids," Edition II., page 136.); I was
merely stupid about it; I am not the less obliged for its loan, for if
I had lived till 100