From William Spence   12 July 1855

London

12 July 1855

My dear Sir

I read the Programme you kindly sent me with great interest, seeing in imagination the delight of your wildflower nosegay makers & successful horticultural competitors, & indeed of all your parishioners old & young, from the new sources of information & topics of thought & causation, for which they must feel they are so deeply indebted to you. Would that all parishioners were thus taught to be “merry & wise” & had a like feeling that their pleasure & happiness are cared for by those above them! What a pleasure in prospect for how many weeks & to how many hearts the announced excursion to the Orwell!

I regret that I have no contributions to offer to your Museum. I transfer all the Insects that came into my possession to the Entom. l Society, & I am not in the way of getting specimens in other departments of Natural History. I like much your plan of giving offhand lectures as you happily call them on a single object. I have long seen that the great defect of lectures is that they pour too much at once into the narrow neck of the receiving vessel so that more than half goes to waste. A lecturet on your Albatross that followed a ship 3000 miles, would be of more real use than a lecture of 2 hours on Ornithology generally. Believe me

My dear Sir | Yours most truly | W. Spence

Please cite as “HENSLOW-406,” in Ɛpsilon: The Correspondence of John Stevens Henslow accessed on 29 March 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/henslow/letters/letters_406