From William Spence   28 September 1855

My dear Sir

Very many thanks for the report & Programme which I received at Sidmouth on my return leisurely homewards from a five months exploration en patrimonade with my son and grandson - the William Spences - of Cornwall & Devonshire, the Lands End, Dartmoor, the valley of the Tamar & Tavy etc. etc.

I read the Report & Programme with great interest & heartily congratulate you on the gratifying success of your labours - for the slight [illeg.] from every conceit & ignorance you must have had all along & your going on year after year in spite of them when so many would have thrown up the whole thing in disgust, shows how truly you are the Man to have devised & carried out such admirable plans of teaching science & rural economy to the working classes. Your excellent idea of lecturettes instead of lectures I applied after my son left for the Br. Assoc ⁿ & to visit Sir W. Stewart, in giving my grandson some notions of geology from the Red Sandstone beds of Sidmouth & the flints without end - the remains of the chalk foundation strewing their surface all the way to Lyme Regis

An American Aloe at Penzance in the open ground of a cottage garden with a noble candelabrum - like a flowering stem 15 ft high & 4 to 5 inches diameter at the base, amply confirmed the mild character of the climate, but the winds are too violent to allow the trees & shrubs showing the same luxuriance of growth as at Torquay - truly the Italy of England - with villas 200 feet above sea level backed by full - grown Elms (not stunted & shorn as on our East Coast) & the houses as on the terraces have forground of Sweet Bay Arbutus etc. through which they see the sea, just as if I used to admire so much in views of the Medditerranean (sic) in going from Nice to Genoa.

Yours

My dear Sir

Yours very truly

W. Spence