Item 96 - Letter from Augustus De Morgan

3 pp

5 Upper Gower Street - There are very few on the [Royal Astronomical] Society's Council competent to judge George Airy's paper on the new inequality of the sun and Venus. Normally Airy would adjudicate but he sits on the Council. Would WW examine the paper and if he thinks it deserves the medal would he allow his opinion to be known to the Council. Thanks WW for his treatise on the first principles of Mechanics. 'I think it highly calculated to do good: especially among the lower species of Wranglers. However might it not be useful to enter a little into what becomes of the motion lost by friction and other resistances, so as to shew that we have no reason to believe in the absolute loss of momentum?'.