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St. Augustin - HC is 'now flourishing about in Paris'. He went to the Institut yesterday where his 'friend Biot' introduced him to, among others, Laplace, Delambre, Arago, Cuvier, Gay Lussac and Humboldt. It is a custom for the savants to have soirées one morning a week for their friends and strangers - Humboldt has offered to take HC to Laplace's tomorrow. He has gained entry into this elite circle thanks to a lady who talks Persian and brought letters of introduction to Humboldt, and through his own acquaintance with Thomas Edward Bowdich [famed for his travels into Africa] currently living in Paris.

The Athenaeum Club - JDF has read an account of the BAAS Dublin meeting and Professor Powell's [Baden Powell] account of Melloni's [Macedonio Melloni] and JDF's experiments: 'His chief object seems to have been to make out the accuracy of his own papers, and he certainly mistakes Melloni's results as completely as it is possible to do when he makes him say that there are two distinct kinds of heat. On the contrary there are an infinite variety which pass into one another insensibly. He equally mistakes my results when he makes them to depend upon Mr Murphy's [Robert Murphy, Elementary Principles of the Theories of Electricity, Heat, and Molecular Actions, 1833] Integration. This is precisely Biot's [Jean Baptiste Biot] objection, viz that the two positions of the plates are not symmetrical as regards the effect of conduction [JDF gives a diagram showing the angles of the plates]. Granted at once. But will the mathematical gentlemen only have the goodness to see the experiment tried and they will see that the effect is of an order quite superior to any effect of conduction whatever - that it is independent of the distances of the plates from one another, which requires, no nicety of adjustment, so that the integration (if practicable) will go for nothing. I have really a right to insist that my experiments shall be seen before they are judged. I admit all the mathematical perturbations, but the chief cause is as clearly developed as the influence of the moon on the tides'. The tables have turned in Paris in favour of JDF's theory: 'Arago [Dominique F J Arago], Libri [Guglielmo Libri] and Dulong [P. L. Dulong] have taken up my cause, Biot is at last silenced'. Could WW point out to Mr Murphy [Robert Murphy] 'that in the case of Depolarization by the mica plate there is the most perfect symmetry (mathematically) which he can desire'.

Letters dated 25 June 1823 - 10 June 1845.

Nantes - JDF spoke to Arago [Dominique F. J. Arago] about the tide observations - at least regarding those being made this month: 'he had represented the matter in the strongest terms in the Chamber of Deputies as you may have seen by the newspaper - he read an extract from your letter, and told the minister of Marine that what was doing in England put him to the blush, and quoted yours and Mr Lubbock's [John W Lubbock] Papers. With regard to the Brest observations he assures me that they are half-printed and going on'. JDF was not so successful regarding Arago's magnetical observations 'which I much fear he will never print'. Arago 'lives in a perpetual turmoil, in which science has no serious part, and yet he seems to feel that he was born for that and not for the petty concerns of daily objurgations'. Biot [Jean Baptiste Biot] attacked JDF's experiments on polarised heat 'in most unmeasured terms: this pleased JDF 'because it shewed how much importance he attached to them'. Biot regretted that JDF had not brought his apparatus with him so as to repeat the experiments: However, JDF offered to repeat them 'with the aid of a few bits of Mica to shew the chief results to Melloni [Macedonio Melloni, who argued that light and radiant heat are effects directly produced by two different causes]...This I did, and afterwards more at large to Mr Libri [Guglielmo Libri] who has taken up my cause very warmly and is perfectly satisfied'. JDF was astonished that even though Biot and Melloni attacked his experiments, neither of them 'had attempted to repeat one of the experiments'. There would have been a meeting at the Institute last week in which Libri was to defend JDF. The only person doing anything of value is 'as usual' Poisson, who is just bringing out his book on heat: 'I know of nothing else doing at the moment in Paris'. JDF has 'never seen anything connected with the origin of Gothic which appeared to me nearly so interesting as the Abbey of Fontevrault and the church at Candes'.

Edinburgh - JDF has 'frittered away' the summer and has now returned to St. Andrew's for the winter. He read 'Arago's posthumous writings on Photometry and I do not think highly of them'. His chief reason for writing 'is to ask whether I can find anywhere in print the formalities used in your University' ceremonies. He was not at the BAAS meeting at Manchester: 'It seems to have been organized on too gigantic a scale'. George Airy's lecture on the ecliptic was presumably the 'chief novelty: but so far as one can judge from abstracts the results are just what we already knew'. William Hopkins '(who is now to be general secretary) could not let glacier theories alone; but has carefully abstained from printing forth any abstract'. JDF 'visited William Thomson at his place in Arran. He is still fearfullly lame'.

Paris - JDF was 'gladdened' by WW's letter. Dominique F. Jean Arago 'with his confounded politics, is beyond all calculation. JDF is unsure whether Arago will now be coming to Cambridge with him: 'it is not yet settled that he does not do so - but the minister at war having become ill, a debate was put off which our savant thought fit to embroil himself in, about the fortifications of Paris, and so we are all in the clouds still'. JDF has nevertheless booked his boat at Calais and will be traveling with Quetelet. JDF is very disappointed with the Parisian savants: 'science in general is at the lowest possible ebb'. Further, 'I have been disgusted with the total and predominant selfishness apparent everywhere'. WW 'need not have the least apprehension of your work being translated - Religion even though [filled] with science is a bitter pill here' [JDF is probably referring to WW's Astronomy and General Physics Considered with Reference to Natural Theology, 1833].

2 Brook Street - HH is extremely glad WW is to publicly support John Couch Adams's claim to have discovered the new planet [Neptune] - as opposed to Urbain Jean Le Verrier: 'It is clear to me after reading the three papers produced at the astronomical society, that Adams would be precisely where Leverrier's now is, had the observations early in August ripened into actual discovery of the nature of the body, actually seen then by the guidance of Adam's calculations. Arago [Francois Arago] is moving heaven and earth (the phrase is not inappropriate here) to fix Leverrier's name upon it'. The planet's name should be taken from mythology.