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Glasgow - WT [later Lord Kelvin] attended Michael Faraday's lecture on Gravitation, and spoke to both him and John Tyndall: 'I made a slight attack on Tyndall by asking him to explain to me the distinction between a viscous solid and a plastic solid. He said that before the end of a year it would be very clear. Which ever word is the most appropriate is the best expression of your theory as I have always understood it. As to the clear and porous alternate layers proving the veined structure, I do not know whether you lay much stress on the explanation Tyndall quotes as yours. It may be true what Tyndall says - that it is occasioned by pressure but that is no explanation'. Many writers have assumed that pressure is the cause of the clearage in slate mountains: 'It is a real thing proved if Tyndall or any one else can prove the clearage surfaces to be perpendicular to the lines of maximum compression'. In diamagnetics WT holds that Weber [Wilhelm Weber] and Tyndall have illustrated by experiment conclusions deducible (and which I deduced in 1846) from Faraday's forces experienced by bismuth; that they have established no new conclusion'. Faraday does not seem to perceive the relation with Weber's phenomena and even doubts Weber's results; 'Tyndall's repetition of Weber's experiment (described in the Phil. Trans.) confirmed the results and removed the possibility of such doubts as Faraday had temporarily raised. Not one of these experiments touches the ultimate nature of the magnetic effect experienced by the substance of a piece of bismuth, since the resultant external action is necessaily the same whether air in the surrounding medium is unpolarised and bismuth severly, or the surrounding medium and the substance of the bismuth both polarised directly (like a 'paramagnetic') but the surrounding medium more so than the bismuth'. Many of Tyndall's experiments simply prove things that did not require proving: 'In reality no testing experiment has ever been made to distinguish between two hypothesis: and I agree (I believe) with Faraday in thinking the second the more probable of the two true (I had a good deal of this in a letter to Tyndall which he published in the Phil. Mag. April 1855)'. WT has been occupied chiefly with electrometers and electroscopes in the apparatus room.

41 Chalcot Villas, Adelaide Road, N.W. - He has received the memoir [of Robert Ellis] and will submit it to the editor of the Athenaeum; suggests that [James] Forbes allow his name to appear as author. Is going to write about the Sheepshanks Scholarship and asks William Whewell to send some information.

The fifth of fifteen boxes of primarily incoming correspondence (Add.MS.a.200-214), arranged roughly A-Z by correspondent. This box contains letters from James David Forbes, a bit out of alphabetical sequence, coming as it does after a box of letters incoming from Digby to Froude.

Has RJ read David Brewster's review of WW's history? ['On the History of the Inductive Sciences', Edinburgh Review, 66, 1837]. Does he think there is anything he needs to answer? Brewster 'has made the article for the most part an angry remonstrance in favour of his own rights unjustly withheld'. For example, WW does not quote from Brewster's 'Life of Newton' or his Edinburgh Journal of Science. That he does not give more credit to Brewster's arrangement of crystals or support his demands for more public rewards to men of science. And by referring to Brewster's controversies with French discoverers: 'I am disposed to stand upon my character and hold my tongue, till I can write my philosophy, and then I can get all to right that is really wrong'. The real injustice is in his history of physiology and neglect of Charles Bell [see WW to RJ, 6 September 1837]: 'If I could find any mode and channel of modifying this I would do it'. Brewster has also taken 'special care to overlook all that I have said of his rival Forbes' [James Forbes] discoveries'.

Penwick, near Edinburgh - WW to return the enclosed letter from [Thomas] Malthus. Very disappointed not to be well enough to attend the [BAAS] Edinburgh meeting, especially since he wanted to 'introduce a plan for statistics'. Hopes this department is well attended. Gives his regards to WW.

The Home Office - GCL has read Professor Forbes' [James D. Forbes] book on the Alps and is acquainted with his glacier theory, and 'will not fail to bear in mind what you say of the character of Prof. Forbes as a man of science'. GCL will be happy to read WW's Platonic translation [Plato's 'Republic', 1861]. WW should add a 'full exposition of the theory of experiment' to his Philosophy of Induction. When he wrote his work on Political Method ['A Dialogue on the Best Form of Government]'] he was unable to find any satisfactory account 'of the nature and limits of experiment. It is commonly assumed that all the physical sciences are experimental whereas it is only a few of them which admit of experiment' - the majority are of observation: 'Even the Political and moral sciences admit of experiment to a greater extent than many, if not most, of the physical science'.

Edinburgh - Apologises for not writing earlier regarding the health of James David Forbes. RC is confident that Forbes will get better.

Item 47 accompanied by two copies of offprints "M. Rendu and Professor Forbes on the Theory of Glaciers" from the Edinburgh Review for July 1844.

AS cannot conceive what Forbes is afraid of: 'He will have fair play here if anywhere in the world. But I hope the controversy will not take up our time' [Possibly concerning James D. Forbes's glacier controversy with John Tyndall and his reluctance to attend the BAAS meeting at Cambridge].

Printed letter to M. Desor of Neufchatel from Forbes establishing his originality concerning the structure of of the ice of glaciers.

Concerns Of the Plurality of Worlds.