Insectivorous plants was published by John Murray on 2 July 1875 (Freeman 1977).

This list identifies reviews of and responses to Insectivorous plants mentioned in Darwin's correspondence in 1875 and 1876, as well as items contained in Darwin's ‘Scrapbook of reviews’ (DAR 226.2), his pamphlet collection (DAR Pam), and elsewhere in the Darwin Archive–CUL. It is not a comprehensive list, but identifies all reviews that were known to Darwin. The list is arranged chronologically according to month of publication. In the case of unsigned reviews, the author's name, if known, is given in brackets, with the source of the attribution supplied in a note.

July 1875

[Maxwell Tylden Masters.] Gardeners’ Chronicle, 10 July 1875, pp. 44–5. DAR 139.18: 24.

Anon. Insect eating plants. Standard, 12 July 1875, p. 2. DAR 139.18: 16.

Alfred William Bennett. Darwin on carnivorous plants. Nature, 15 July 1875, pp. 206– 209, and 22 July 1875, pp. 228–231. DAR 139.18: 5–6.

Anon. Daily Review, 16 July 1875, p. 5. DAR 139.18: 1–2.

Anon. Athenaum, 17 July 1876, pp. 88–9. DAR139.18: 25.

Anon. Bazaar, Exchange & Mart, 21 July 1875, p. 51. DAR 139.18: 23.

[William Bernhard Tegetmeier?] Field, 24 July 1875, p. 92. DAR 139.18: 27.

Ellen Frances Lubbock. Academy, 24 July 1875, pp. 93–4. DAR 139.18: 9.

Anon. Tablet, 24 July 1875, p. 106. DAR 139.18: 13.

Anon. New York Times, 29 July 1875, p. 1. DAR 139.18: 8.

Anon. Scotsman, 30 July 1875, p. 2. DAR 139.18: 15.

Anon. Gardener's Magazine, 31 July 1875, p. 379. DAR 139.18: 26.

August 1875

Anon. Daily Evening Telegraph, Philadelphia, 3 August 1875, p. 7. DAR 139.18: 17.

Anon. Nonconformist, 4 August 1875, p. 790. DAR 139.18: 28.

[Ernst von Hesse-Wartegg.] Insektenfressende Pflanzen. Fremden-Blatt, 10 August 1875, pp. 11–12, and 11 August 1875, pp. 11–12. DAR 139.18: 3–4.

[Lawson Tait.] Spectator, 14 August 1875, pp. 1036–7. DAR 226.2: 167.

Anon. New York Daily Tribune, 20 August 1875, p. 6. DAR 139.18: 21.

September 1875

[Ernst von Hesse-Wartegg.] Insectenfressende Pflanzen. Der Pionier. Illustrierte Zeitschrift zur Unterhaltung und Belehrung für Jedermann 14: 374–6, 382–4. DAR Pam R271.

Anon. Independent, New York, 9 September 1875, p. 10. DAR 139.18: 10.

Anon. Evening Post, New York, 13 September 1875, p. 1. DAR 139.18: 7.

Anon. Australasian, Melbourne, 18 September 1875, p. 360. DAR 139.18: 19.

From Francis Darwin [1875?]

Down

My dear Father

I have had two mornings work at Drosera but without success. I got into a very good way of doing it but the plants seem sluggish. The first morning 26″ was the quickest—counting from the beginning of contact of the drop of meat infusion. The second morning they were more sluggish still; ammonia is not so nice to work with as meat; as with meat one is not afraid of evaporation making ones drop weak if one waits a bit— The only thing of the slightest interest is that contact for 1' produced movement in just the same time counting from the beginning as contact for 4” did; the tentacles were on the same leaf; but of course one experiment isnt much good— I shall try again, because now I can do it accurately—

My frog preparations are pretty good—

I am very glad mother & you are keeping well.

Thank you for writing about the pamphlets, we have cut up a lot & sorted some— it will be done when you come home—

Yr affec son | F Darwin

DAR 274.1: 28

To F. J. Cohn 1 January 1875

Down, | Beckenham, Kent. | Railway Station | Orpington. S.E.R.

Jan 1. 75

My dear Sir

According to our English fashion “I wish you many happy returns of this day”. I write now to ask you whether I might copy two of your drawings of Aldrovanda, marked by a red cross on the sketch which you were so kind as to send me. I should like to add one of the quadrifid trichomes if these have been drawn by you. I give only woodcuts in my forthcoming work, and I should of course say that they were copied from you. I have not described Aldrovanda, & refer my readers to your work; but my few remarks would hardly be intelligble without these drawings. I am going to send my other drawings to the woodcut-engraver immediately; & if you grant me permission, & if I receive your work in time, I will have the drawings copied. It would therefore be a great assistance to me if you could send me a proof of the plate.

Darwin played an important role in the controversy over vivisection that broke out in late 1874. Public debate was sparked when the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals brought charges against a French physiologist who had performed vivisection on dogs at the British Medical Association congress in Norwich. The prosecution was unsuccessful, but it gave rise to a series of campaigns to increase public awareness about experiments on live animals in Britain. In December 1874, Darwin was asked to sign a memorial by the writer and social reformer Frances Power Cobbe. It called upon the RSPCA to investigate the nature and scope of vivisections performed in physiology laboratories and teaching hospitals, and to draft legislation that would protect animals from suffering. Darwin was sympathetic to the cause, but found some of Cobbe's rhetoric inflammatory, and he strongly objected to her criticism of the eminent physiologist Rudolf Virchow. He explained his position to his daughter Henrietta: ‘I certainly could not sign the paper sent me by Miss Cobbe, with its monstrous (as it seems to me) attack on Virchow for experimenting on the Trichinae’ (letter to H. E. Litchfield, 4 January [1875]). Darwin also worried that any bill passed by a House of Commons largely ignorant of science might halt the progress of physiology. He reiterated these concerns in a letter to Thomas Henry Huxley ten days later, urging him to work with other physiologists to present their own petition (letter to T. H. Huxley, 14 January 1875). In the event, Darwin became closely involved with the drafting of alternative legislation. Over the course of several months, he wrote dozens of letters to leading experimenters, physicians, surgeons, and public officials, and drew on his own family circle for assistance in preparing a bill for Parliament.

Darwin almost never involved himself in public controversy and so the extent of his activity in the vivisection affair is surprising. His own research on animals relied primarily on comparative anatomy, including dissection, and natural-historical observation. But he had drawn extensively on the work of physiologists in his study of emotional expression, and in his most recent research on insectivorous plants.

Plants always held an important place in Darwin's theorising about species, and botanical research had often been a source of personal satisfaction, providing relief during his periods of severe illness. Yet on 15 January 1875, Darwin confessed to his close friend Joseph Dalton Hooker, ‘I am getting sick of insectivorous plants.’ Darwin had worked on the subject intermittently since 1859, and had been steadily engaged on a book manuscript for some nine months. The pleasures of observation and experiment had given way to continuous writing and revision, activities that Darwin found less gratifying: ‘I am slaving away solely at making detestably bad English a very little less bad.’ The process was compounded by the fact that Darwin was also revising another manuscript, the second edition of Climbing plants, which he hoped to publish in a single volume along with the material on insectivorous plants. No sooner had he completed these tasks, than he took up the revision of another, much longer book, the second edition of Variation. ‘I am merely slaving over the sickening work of preparing new Editions’, he complained again to Hooker on 18 August. Finally, by autumn, he was able to devote more time to research, returning to the subject of cross and self-fertilisation. On 3 October, he wrote with fresh enthusiasm to the new assistant director at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, William Turner Thiselton-Dyer, about the prospect of obtaining new specimens: ‘I have great wish next summer to experimentise on some Marantaceous plant to make out meaning of 2 sets of differently coloured stamens.’ At intervals during the year, Darwin was diverted from the onerous task of writing by various controversies. January saw the conclusion of a long-running dispute with the zoologist St George Jackson Mivart. In April and early May, Darwin was occupied with a heated debate over vivisection, working with scientific colleagues and family members to prepare draft legislation for Parliament. At the end of the year, he campaigned vigorously against the blackballing of a young zoologist, Edwin Ray Lankester, who was up for election to the Linnean Society. The ‘malcontents’ of the Linnean sickened him much more than insectivorous plants. As he confessed to Hooker on 12 December, ‘I have not felt so angry for years.’

In January, the protracted dispute with Mivart came to a close.