From William Spence 18 September 1857

London

Sept. 18 1857

My dear Sir

Many thanks for the report which I have read with equal interest & pleasure as exhibiting such gratifying proofs of the success of your unwearied exertions to elevate the character & increase the happiness of your parishioners by rewarding habits of industry order & observation.

I was particularly [illeg.] by the experiments on Poudrette, having some 20 years since heard a great deal about this poudrette from a French friend with whom I spend ten days at his country house near Paris on an estate of farm land he had lately bought & was hoping to fertilise by largely employing it; with what success I never heard but I fear from the results of your trials nothing very striking.

Our water closets of course put the preparation of this substance in England out of question & judging from the discussions of the Socy of [illeg.] there is little prospect of our being able to avail ourselves of London Sewage as [illeg.]. This is unfortunate for as I found when at Pisa that the Lucchese [illeg.] for the contents of a Cesspool of a family, the value of the produce of the water closets of our 500,000 London families must be worth as many pounds if it can be in any way kept separate from the great mass of street drainings & rain, but this seems at present hopeless.

Congratulating you on the very fine weather you had for your exhbition on the 16th. I am

My dear Sir

Yours very truly

W. Spence

Please cite as “HENSLOW-1151,” in Ɛpsilon: The Correspondence of John Stevens Henslow accessed on 29 March 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/henslow/letters/letters_1151