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Letters from Sir Herbert Jenner-Fust, Prof. Henslow, Lord Morpeth, the Bishop of Melbourne, Lieut. General Thackeray, the Marquess Camden, and an unidentified person.

John Stevens Henslow thinks WH should succeed him in the office of Secretary to the Philosophical Society. Henslow says he has spoken to WW and Robert Willis about the subject: 'He asks me to consult with you about it' - although there is not really much to say on the subject.

Herstmonceux, Hailsham - JCH has had a letter from Miss Henslow [Fanny Henslow] which has perplexed and grieved him: 'she speaks of her 'aged father' [John S. Henslow] as having found 'an asylum for his life' in a place in Kent, which, I am told, is an asylum for indigent and decayed clergymen. From her expressions I am afraid that poor Henslow must have had some terrible illness that has brought on premature old age: for he was some years our junior'. Could WW let him know what has happened.

Trinity College - Henslow [John S. Henslow] has been appointed Botanical Professor and has thus resigned his Mineralogical Chair at Cambridge. WW has been canvassing for the office - 'and so far I have met with all possible encouragement and with no rival. I conceive therefore that I have not much chance of failing to be elected'. WW intends to go to Freyberg and Berlin 'which seem to me the best mineralogical schools in Germany and especially given to crystallography'.

Letters written from 17 Savile Row. Letters dated 25 Apr. - 23 Nov. 1842.

12 Upper Gower St. - Reports on Mr Jukes' plans [to go to Newfoundland]; asks him to pass on his regrets to Henslow that he cannot visit, though he likes Cambridge; he is house hunting preparatory to getting married.

Cambridge - The account WW heard of Ramsay [Marmaduke Ramsay?] was true - JSH received an account of his death from Ramsay's sister: 'We have a gap in our Cambridge circle which can not easily be restored'.

JSH has been thinking about the charge WW made towards him regarding the character of the man he voted for: 'I am afraid that I did not consider Crick's [Thomas Crick?] character in so true a light as I ought to have done when I voted for him'. JSH had no idea that Crick had removed his name from the Cambridge Philosophical Society: 'I ought certainly to have felt myself justified in not voting - since I had not given him any promise'. JSH was aware of Crick's conduct towards tradesmen but had decided to ignore it. He is obliged to WW for his rebuke.

Hitcham, Bildeston, Suffolk - On receiving Lord Lyttelton's [George W. Lyttelton] circular, JSH wrote to the Chairman to say he would come if wanted. The day of the voting looks like it will clash with JSH's plans to go to Berkshire: 'If I can't vote on Tuesday, I must give up my Berkshire trip, but from your letter I suppose I can - Crick's circular is nothing more nor less than what I should be ashamed to call it - and if it is a type of Johnian morality, I feel that our college is at a low ebb indeed - I am glad to find that some of the best names are with you, and give so flat a contradiction to Mr Crick's manifesto' [see JSH to WW, 15 May 1836].

Hitcham, Bildeston, Suffolk - 'Lindley's [John Lyndley] School Botany is not the sort of work WW means. It is merely a selection of plants described according to the natural system, with figures, purely technical without reference to the philosophy of the subject'. JSH has not forgotten WW's suggestion to produce such a work but is just too busy with two sermons a week. The work WW alludes to is by De Theis.

JSH will be happy to dine with WW on Monday. The place where they lodge in Felixstowe has been destroyed by fire. JSH thinks that no doubt he will be blamed for his pamphlet: 'but really it seems to me a perfect farce in these days that those who teach Natural History in a University should not be required to make the subject the main business of their lives instead of the mere occupation of their leisure moments. However the machinery we possess was adequate to the wants of a century ago is no more capable of supplying the demand now, than the spinning wheels of my village are of competing jennies of Manchester'.

Hitcham, Bildeston, Suffolk - Adam Sedgwick 'put the same query to me as you have done respecting the transmutation of species - and my reply must be the same - no Botanist, so far as I am aware, gives any credit to the tale. How the results have been obtained in the 2 or 3 cases out of many that have been tried is a mystery - but possibly some carelessness, or neglect, or even trickery, may have been practiced. In the present state of our knowledge I should as soon expect to hear that some one had seen a planet blaze out into a sun'. JSH gives his comments concerning WW's neighbour's encounters with barley and oats.

St Alban's - JSH is sorry he cannot be at the meeting WW refers to, but is willing to help with any general arrangements that may be considered advisable. He will lecture at Cambridge for 4 days during the Easter term: 'The great inconvenience which I have felt, is the shortness of the period appointed for residence during that term. If our men were obliged (as at Oxford) to keep the whole term it would greatly facilitate the introduction of a course of lectures in Botany at a period of the year best suited for the purpose'.

Hitcham, Hadley, Suffolk - Even if JSH could have attended the meeting he could not have said more than the enclosed comments, which include details concerning the number of lectures he can give during the Easter term and the Botany syllabus.

Hitcham, Hadleigh, Suffolk - Thanks WW for sending him 'the interesting paper'. He will read again what WW has written on the history of Botany. He is coming to Cambridge on November 2nd for two nights.

Hitcham, Bildeston, Suffolk - JSH sends WW a list of Royal Society publications concerned with Botany. He has been unable to hunt down Hooker's [Joseph Hooker] scattered articles on De Candolle [Augustin Pyrame de Candolle], however the Chronicle Index for 1856 will soon be out: 'I wrote to Hooker, who is so infinitely more au fait at Botanical Progress than myself, and he tells me has written to you to say he will, as soon as he possibly can, devote the time necessary to meet your wishes'. WW will have probably seen Hooker's Introduction to Cryptogamic Botany: 'more advance has been made of late years in this part of the subject than in any other - this has been owing to the vast improvement of late in Microscopes, toys in the hands of so many - mighty engines in the service of progress with the few - I find our botanical nomenclature sadly grates upon the ear of some of our Cambridge friends - in the notice of what we require at the next Natural Science Tripos - I tell the V.C. [Vice Chancellor] the Classics of the Universities are to blame in having allowed the Natural Sciences to progress without their aid - no doubt a scientific idea can be conveyed by a barbarity as well as by a University - but the latter is to be preferred if we can have it - as much as good manners are preferable to vulgarity'.

Hitcham, Bildeston, Suffolk - WW will find his catmint figured in the Botany Magazine under the name of Nepeta longiflora. However like many garden flowers it has many synonyms.

Hitcham, Bildeston, Suffolk - JSH is going to Hemel Hempstead to see some of the 'haches en silex' brought from Abbeville, and to discuss it with his host Mr Evans: 'There is no question whatever about these haches being the work of man - but, in my mind, a very great doubt indeed of their having been wrought in pre-historic periods. I can't see how the deluge has anything to do with them'.

Kew Gardens - JSH has not had an opportunity to answer WW's queries. Although 'recent observations have not yet absolutely demonstrated the truth of Mr Frere's [John Frere] original account in the Archaeologia, I have now seen that account, and am quite prepared to admit the extreme probability of its correctness, and that the celts [pre-historic axe like instrument] really occur in undisturbed Drift - of a freshwater origin'. The celts are the work of man and are like the ones he has seen from the French localities. They are very old and were probably used as hatchets mounted on wood. JSH sees no reason not to 'suppose a considerable elevation throughout the N. of Europe to have taken place within a moderate number of 1000's of years, sufficient to explain this. The facts related in the letter of the Danish Professor (whose name I forget) in the Athenaeum, appear to prove that in some cases very little alteration indeed has taken place by the action of water upon the mounds in which the savages who used these celts stored them, as it should seem (from Sir C. Lyell's account of a modern mound)'. JSH hopes 'to visit the locality at Amieus, where I think it has been clearly demonstrated these weapons are found in undisturbed Drift'.

Hitcham, Bildeston, Suffolk - JSH has no hesitation in considering Mr E's manuscript worth publishing among the miscellaneous materials: 'I have a diagram introduced last year at my lectures, which show how readily the fundamental spiral may be detected, by noting the intersection of 2 secondary spirals coiled in opposite directions. But the speculations of Mr E, in his mode of resolving the fundamental spiral, and his ingenious conjectures and suggestions, so far as I have hitherto been able to look into them, are new to me'.

JSH will take the manuscript to Hitcham and will let WW know what he thinks of it.

Hitcham Rectory - Thanks WW for the parcel - 'scarcely could anything of the kind have arrived more opportunely, weak sight has for months prevented all reading beyond a few lines at a time, which of course adapts itself better to poetry than prose'. Thanks WW and Cordelia Whewell for their invitation to Lowestoft but is too ill to come.

Thanks WW for the present: 'A likeness may be striking, but it does not always follow that it must be pleasing, yours is both, and in my opinion quite perfect' [WW's portrait of 1835?].