From Joseph Henry   27 April 1844

My Dear Sir

I send this morning to be forwarded by the steamer of the first, a small package for you directed to the House of the American booksellers Wiley & Putnam Stationers Court Pater Noster Row London. I have made arrangements with this House for the transmission of packages and should you wish hereafter to send me anything it will come safely and with "dispatch" through this channel.

You will find in the package the last No of the Flora of North America, which as yet has been published. I have sent you in succession the several nos. of this work as they have appeared and you will oblige me by informing me in your next letter if your set is complete up to this time. I have received from you during the past year two packages the one containing your letters on agriculture and the other your account of the Roman antiquities found at Rougham. The letters on agriculture came in very good time. We have lately established an agricultural society in this state of which I am a member and therefore it behoves me to learn something of the subject. I think your letters admirably fitted for the object for which they were intended and I have read them with much pleasure and instruction.

I have made several ineffectual attempts to procure an Alligator for you. Several of my pupils on their return to the south have attempted to send on one to me but the animal has died or has been lost in the transportation. A few years ago two were sent from New Orleans to Professor Jager which came safely and I supposed I would find no difficulty in getting one for you in the same manner but I have not been so fortunate.

Many thanks to you for your kind invitation to visit your parsonage. I have not the least doubt from past experience that I would be made "right welcome" but at present I have not the most distant idea of ever visiting England again. If however by any unforseen circumstances I sh[ould] ever again cross the Great Deep I sho[uld] certainly not leave England without visiting you.

I know not if you are still in the line of mineralogy but I send you a specimen of uniaxial mica from Orange Co. state of New York. The biaxial variety is very common but this I send is rare in the United States. By polarized light the single axis is readily determined.

The recollections of my visit to Cambridge are of the most pleasurable kind and this pleasure is renewed every time I hear from you. I hope therefore although our communications may be short and far between that they may be continued through life. I hope in the course of a few months to be able to send you some of the results of my late researches in electricity and other subjects in Natural Philosophy. I have just been engaged in a series of experiments on "soap bubbles" which has afforded me considerable amusement and more instruction than I anticipated.

Yours Truly | Joseph Henry