Offers Smith information on marine plants, having collected them in Scarborough 1782-1783 and communicated them with and received descriptions in return from [John] Lightfoot and [William] Hudson. Drew microscopic studies of 'Confervae'; intended to publish but deaths of Lightfoot and Hudson and building works prevented him. One of the Scarborough plants he sent Lightfoot was 'Fucus hypoglossum' the 'phyllitis' of Ellis, Hudson thought it a variety of 'alatus'. Hudson denied that the 'Saxifraga umbrosa' Frankland found growing in Thorp-arch woods, near Wetherby, Yorkshire, was indiginous and was reluctantant to allow new species as he had a list of plants commissioned by Dr [Richard] Richardson [(1663-1741), physician and botanist] to be propagated in unsuspected places so that afterwards he could find them "wild" and this list might explain many discoveries but not 'Corrigiola litteralis' found by Hudson in Clapham Sands, Devon.

His specimens of 'Fucus hypoglossum' the size of those figured by [Thomas] Woodward [in his "Linnean Transactions" paper 'Descriptions of two new British Fucus'] but disputes Woodward's figure of fructification and engraving.