From Richard Owen   4 February 1860

Dear Henslow

A careful Assistant in the Geol. Department will proceed, one day next week, to Stanway & superintend the packing of the Museum, Books & Philos. ^l Instruments. He will require the assistance of a Carpenter, for which he will pay, to inclose the cabinets in a defensive kind of ‘crate’, suitable for protection by luggage train.

Perhaps M. ^r Laing could recommend a suitable handicraftsman to proceed, with his tools, from Colchester, in company with our M. ^r Davis to Stanway. I will direct Davis to call on M. ^r Laing in Colchester, for this purpose, on his way to Stanway: and I will give Davis a note to M. ^r Wagstaff. This, I presume, will meet all the exigencies of the case.

The estimate & catalogue can only be made here, as we unpack and examine the specimens. As soon as completed it shall be forwarded to M. ^r Laing.

I assure you I read with interest M. ^r Gwatkins’s Essay: it was impossible not to see in it the thoughts of a very superior mind. It seems to me, indeed, to be lost time to attempt to reconcile what at present is irreconcilable; and the very brief period allotted to our finite operations is better applied to the establishment or advancement of either religious or natural truths. But to assail the foundations of the former, by speculations however ingenious, & by hypothetical conditions and collocations, seems to be a worse waste of time than attempted reconciliations.

Believe me, | Ever truly your’s, | Richard Owen.