From C. J. F. Bunbury   10 November 1856

My dear Henslow,

Many thanks for your letter, but I am afraid we must conclude from it that we cannot expect hope for a lecture from you this winter, as I cannot undertake to deliver one at Ipswich. The truth is, lecturing is not at all my vocation, I find it a great exertion & a great fatigue, & I have therefore almost resolved not to attempt it except at Bury & Mildenhall, where I am as it were at home. Moreover, of the 3 days you name, it so happens that February 10 is the very day fixed for my own lecture at Bury, & on Jan 13 Mr Kingsley is engaged to deliver a lecture there, which I am particularly anxious to hear. But we should be extremely glad to see you here, lecture or no lecture, at any time this winter that you can come; & I hope that you may yet be able to manage it, although you do seem to be formidably beset with engagements. As for lectures, having so many to deliver, I should think you must be tolerably sick of them. But you have never been here since our visit to Madeira & Teneriffe, & I have many things that I want to show you.

I was much interested by an account, which you may probably have seen, in the Literary Gazette, of Prof. Smyth’s astronomical & philosophical operations on the Peak of Teneriffe. I know both the localities & the persons mentioned, which made it the more interesting to me.

I do not know whether you may have heard of Lyell’s proceedings this autumn: he has been making a continental tour, visiting Berlin, Breslau, the Riesengebirge, Dresden, Prague, Vienna, the Austrian Alps, Salzburg, Munich, Strasbourg, & Paris; seeing at each place the principal geologists, & visiting under their guidance the chief geological localities;— a delightful tour! His letters have been full of most interesting & important & curious geological information, the pith of which will no doubt enrich the next editions of his Principles & Manual.

Mrs Bunbury unites with me in kind remembrances to Miss Henslow as well as to yourself; &, with some faint hope of seeing you here this winter, I remain

yours very sincerely, | C J F Bunbury