He says also that he found a frozen fox curled up with his nose buried in his tail.
N.B. It is just possible that the latter fact is stated by M'Clintock, not by Dr. Kane.
(269/4. The final passage is a postscript by Mr. W.E. Darwin bearing on Mr. Lawson Tait's idea of the respirator function of the fox's tail.)
LETTER 270. TO G.J. ROMANES. Down, July 12th, 1875.
I am correcting a second edition of "Variation under Domestication," and find that I must do it pretty fully. Therefore I give a short abstract of potato graft-hybrids, and I want to know whether I did not send you a reference about beet. Did you look to this, and can you tell me anything about it?
I hope with all my heart that you are getting on pretty well with your experiments.
I have been led to think a good deal on the subject, and am convinced of its high importance, though it will take years of hammering before physiologists will admit that the sexual organs only collect the generative elements.
The edition will be published in November, and then you will see all that I have collected, but I believe that you gave all the more important cases. The case of vine in "Gardeners' Chronicle," which I sent you, I think may only be a bud-variation not due to grafting. I have heard indirectly of your splendid success with nerves of medusae. We have been at Abinger Hall for a month for rest, which I much required, and I saw there the cut-leaved vine which seems splendid for graft hybridism.