From William Jackson Hooker   22 April 1828

My dear Sir

I have been sadly negligent of your kind & valued correspondence & my conscience often reproaches for me. I have been for the last fortnight more immediately on the point of writing to you & I was almost ashamed to receive your letter without having put my intentions in execution. I particularly wished to mention to you a most indefatigable Naturalist at this time at Madeira, M ^r Lowe. But you know him and must therefore be as well capable of judging as myself how desirable it would be, for the course of science, that he should remain longer there. His doing so however will depend on the extension of his travelling Bachelorship & he says “my friend Henslow is trying to have this accomplished.” May I hope that such will be the case For then I am sure he will collect ample materials from Flora & Fauna of Madeira. He has already sent ample collections of plants to me & he will yet find many more if he does the same with other branches of Nat. History he will have spent his time to very great advantage.

I have just sent the last sheet to press for the 1 ^st No. of my Mis coll. Britannica in which I have mentioned Mr Lowe’s being thus employed. Do I do right in saying that he is abroad on a Travelling Bachelorship & is this a University Fellowship or Bachelorship or is it from any particular College? It is not too late to alter the emphasis: or perhaps I ought not to mention under what circumstances he travels at all. He will visit Teneriffe, too, if he has time & there would be a glorious field for him.

Thank you for your kind enquiries relative to my young friends. They will certainly go to Cambridge: but as they are still young they will pass a year with a clergyman in Gloucestershire (a Mr Hall) previously to entering. And he I suppose being a Cambridge man will arrange all future matters.

I began one of my Classes, a popular Course yesterday, & my College Course commences on the 6 ^th. This is almost too much in conjunction with what I have to do for Bot. Magazine, Bot. Miscellany, our Icones Filicines, a Flora of British N. America & other duties & employments. I wish you would come to Glasgow & help me to look out for you & to name some plants from my duplicate specimens. It would then be a very easy operation; & I could thus assist your Museum.

I have had much pleasure in seeing Wilson of Warrington here last year. He is intelligent, understanding & will make a very good Botanist. I have inserted in the 1 ^st N ^o. of my Miscellany his list of rare plants of the Breadalbane M ^s. I have also noticed your discovery of the Althaea hirsuta.

Yours ever, my dear Sir | most faithfully | W. J. Hooker.–