From William Spence   19 July 1856

My dear Sir

Very many thanks for the lists of plants & Programme of your Show, which if I were ten years younger I would run down to Hitcham to have the gratification of seeing, but though I must deny myself this pleasure, I shall see in imagination the happy faces of your young competitors & the large amount of instruction & enjoyment which your exertions will diffuse through your parish.

I am delighted with your account in the Gardener’s Chronicle of the way in which you have brought about these admirable effects. The details you give with those to follow are previously what I felt to be so essential for enabling other clergymen to imitate your example, & when completed in the Chronicle & published as I trust they will be in a separate volume, they cannot fail to have this result, for though with D. ^r Lindley I see but too clearly how few are competent to do what you do, yet there must be many Clergymen with the desire & a sufficient knowledge of Botany to make a beginning in the same path where you have so clearly shown them the road, & nothing is more certain than that bread thus thrown on the water will be found again one day by others.

I am |my dear Sir | yours most truly | W. Spence