Item 72 - Letter from John Stevens Henslow

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'.