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Greenhill, Edinburgh - Thanks WW for his last letter. JDF has forwarded the last part of the Transactions of the Edinburgh Royal Society to the Cambridge Philosophical Society. He has also enclosed an unpublished paper to WW by his friend Dr. Gregory [Duncan Gregory?], and another paper obtained by Mr Robison (Secretary of the Edinburgh Royal Society and son of the late Professor John Robison) by 'a most ingenious artist in Edinburgh' concerned with the escapement of a clock. Perhaps George Airy would like to see it. JDF has been studying Poisson everyday with 'a great deal of pleasure and advantage'. It will be a while before he understands Joseph Fourier's Theorie Analytique de la Chaleur, [1822]. He has begun George Airy's tract on the Calculus of Variations, and been engaged in several enquiries, especially the vibrations of hot metals: 'I have been enabled to arrive at such general laws as will I think demonstrate that Leslie [John Leslie] and Faraday were far wrong in their conjectures'. JDF hopes WW will come to the first meeting of the BAAS at York: 'I have known Dr. Brewster [David Brewster] long enough to be aware that he sometimes takes up particular views with a bigotry which defies conviction, and I am certain that there is no one who can more sincerely regret than myself the most unwarranted attacks he has made upon professors. But how this can affect the York meeting I cannot conceive'. DB will have no superintendence at all of the meeting.

Greenhill, Edinburgh - JDF has successfully obtained sparks from a natural magnet upon the principle of Michael Faraday's recent experiments. John Leslie and others have witnessed it and are 'perfectly satisfied'. JDF has been so absorbed in electro magnetical experiments that he has made hardly any progress with his report [Report upon the Recent Progress and Present State of Meteorology, drawn up at the Request of the BAAS, 1832]. How long should it be?

Edinburgh - JDF has lost no time in distributing WW's circulars. His main reason for writing is to suggest Edinburgh for the BAAS meeting next year. Edinburgh is not to be considered a University town: 'The University can do nothing, it has no status, no power , no funds'. While David Brewster promised to give the most entertaining course of lectures ever given at the University, JDF adheres 'to the very opposite principle' and will be striving 'to foster a spirit for sound physico-mathematical attainment at present nearly unknown in Scotland'. His lectures will be a 'cautious mixture of pure demonstration with experiment and collateral illustration'. However, JDF feels his labours will be wasted for want of an adequate textbook in theoretical mechanics: 'your mechanics has appeared to me far the best book I have met with for teaching from [The First Principles of Mechanics: With Historical and Practical Illustrations, 1832]...But for my purpose it is to long: it is on the whole rather too difficult, and in statics, too complete'. JDF would like WW to do an abridgement of it with less mathematics, coupled with some problems taken from WW's recent work on Dynamics [An Introduction to Dynamics Containing the Laws of Motion and the First Three Sections of the Principia, 1832]. The only work which approaches JDF's criteria is a textbook by Dr Jackson of St. Andrews University: 'but it is a little repulsive, and does not afford the means of passing over the more difficult parts'. John Leslie's 'book is incredibly bad, but its division into Statics and Dynamics renders it preferable to those which want it'.