the most elegant compliments which I have ever
received.

I have directed to be sent to you Belt's "Nicaragua," which seems to me
the best Natural History book of travels ever published. Pray look to
what he says about the leaf-carrying ant storing the leaves up in a
minced state to generate mycelium, on which he supposes that the larvae
feed. Now, could you open the stomachs of these ants and examine the
contents, so as to prove or disprove this remarkable hypothesis? (683/4.
The hypothesis has been completely confirmed by the researches of
Moller, a nephew of F. Muller's: see his "Brasilische Pilzblumen"
("Botan. Mittheilgn. aus den Tropen," hrsg. von A.F.W. Schimper, Heft
7).)

LETTER 684. TO F. MULLER. Down, May 9th, 1877.

I have been particularly glad to receive your letter of March 25th on
Pontederia, for I am now printing a small book on heterostyled plants,
and on some allied subjects. I feel sure you will not object to my
giving a short account of the flowers of the new species which you have
sent me. I am the more anxious to do so as a writer in the United States
has described a species, and seems to doubt whether it is heterostyled,
for he thinks the difference in the length of the pistil depends merely
on its growth! In my new book I shall use all the information and
specimens which you have sent me with respect to the heterostyled
plants, and your published notices.

One chapter will be devoted to cleistogamic species, and I will just
notice your new grass case. My son Francis desires me to thank you much
for your kindness with respect to the plants which bury their seeds.

I never fail to feel astonished, when I receive one of your letters, at
the number of new facts you are continually observing. With respect to
the great supposed subterranean animal, may not the belief have arisen
from the natives having seen large skeletons embedded in cliffs? I
remember finding on the banks of the Parana a skeleton of a Mastodon,
and the Gauchos concluded that it was a borrowing animal like the
Bizcacha. (684/1. On the supposed existence in Patagonia of a gigantic
land-sloth, see "Natural Science," XIII., 1898, page 288, where
Ameghino's discovery of the skin of Neomylodon listai was practically
first made known, since his privately published pamphlet was
not generally seen. The animal was afterwards identified with a
Glossotherium, closely allied to Owen's G. Darwini, which has been named
Glossotherium lista