To George Knights Friday 1855

My dear Sir,

I write in a great hurry having literally been doing nothing for the last 3 days (& almost nights) but get ready a set of specimens for some Railway Demonstration at Stamford. I have just finished the job & packed up the Chest, & must be out to Bildeston immediately. I must seriously protest again the lecture programme. I understood very distinctly that I was to have 3 Lectures assigned to me, & that I might exchange one of these with Ld A. Hervey. I told you I should not be able this year to prepare the Lect. on Bot. Geog. & Sidney was to take that day which comes too near Cambridge Lectures for me to be able to think of lecturing then. With the dimidiated amount of lectures 3 is certainly not less than should fall to my share. In consequence of the understanding we came to, I have now made other arrangements. I have engaged to Lecture at Bury on March 4 & Ld A. H. is to lecture for me on Jan 22d (I think it will be). But above all I have engaged with Ld Stanley at the Department of Science & Art to prepare 10 or 12 diagrams this winter, which I could not have done if I had to prepare 4 lectures - & shall be pressed to do with 2. I have so many calls on my time. Pray therefore strike out the April 1t lecture. If Sidney has declined for that day, I will do my best to get someone as a substitute but positively I cannot undertake what it would take me on a month's work, & hard work too, to prepare for. I have 2 fat volumes in French (just out) to read on the subject, in which great advance has recently been made, & then I shall have Diagrams to prepare. The thing is absolutely impossible. This Railway Job has set me 3 days behind, & made me half ill yesterday - & now I am asked to go to Lavenham to inspect a set of Minerals for sale - & then something else will turn up, as it generally does once & a half per day, that I can't find time for what I consent to - & must not take more upon me. Surely there must be some one in Ipswich or Bury who can be persuaded to give a lift[?]. Excuse this hurried letter

& believe me

Very truly yrs

J. S. Henslow