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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
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