From Leonard Jenyns   3 October 1860

My dear Henslow,

My last letter was written to you a long time back, & since then we have both, I believe, been from home in different directions,— you to France & I to Weymouth. It is so many years since I was at the latter place with you & your then household that I remembered nothing of it, & it was all new to me.— The weather however was not such as to make my stay there very enjoyable. There were scarcely more than 3 or 4 days sufficiently fine & settled to allow of excursionizing beyond very moderate distances.— Those I devoted chiefly to Portland, which is much more easily reached now than formerly, steamers flying backwards & forwards several times in the day, & landing you there in twenty minutes.— I was very much struck with the breakwater now constructing there, one of the marvels of modern engineering, to the end of which & back is itself a walk of more than 3 miles, & it is to extend further yet;— but I found nothing new in the botanical line, & the season was rather late for that work.— I shall like to hear what you have been about in France, & what the result of your researches at Amiens for the preadamite celts—: you have no doubt found, or got from others, plenty, -- but what, think you, is the testimony they afford in connexion with their geological site as an earlier date for the first appearance of men on this earth than has been generally conceded?— I confess I am inclined from what I have heard or read on the subject, to be extremely skeptical on this point.— Louisa, I think, did not go with you with at last, though you mentioned in your letter that she was to be your companion.— I presume she remained in Derbysh all the while, & I hope she has been returned to you in better health than she was in some months back.— I am so glad to hear of Leonard’s new curacy in Charles’s neighbourhood in Kent: it will bring him within a more reasonable distance of his friends, & seems altogether a much more eligible one than his last in Wales.— I saw a report from Charles to Eliz of his first performance at Great Chart, E. having gone with him, & a very favourable one it was.— I am still at work getting my house to rights & looking after the Upholsterer and Carpenter who have not yet completed all that is wanted to make it thoroughly comfortable. I shall be very glad to have you for a visitor in it some day or other, whenever you are able to come this way, — & Louisa too, if she is so disposed, as I shall have two spare bedrooms; — but the 2 ^nd is not ready yet,— I have been interested in looking over Babington’s new Fl. of Camb ^sh, from my connexions with the county for so many years;— it seems carefully got up,— but he is not quite correct in stating (p. 231) M ^r Weston to have been the discoverer of Cephalanthera Grandiflora in the country,— as, if you remember, we had found it in the belt round the park at Bottisham, the same locality in which he observed it in 1850,— years & years previous to that date.—

With kind love to Louisa, believe me, | your’s affect ^ly, L. Jenyns.