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Oxford - CD and Baden Powell have enclosed a number of standard printed letters addressed to certain people at Cambridge, inquiring whether they will be attending the BAAS meeting at Oxford in June. Could WW distribute them and communicate any others he thinks will attend. The letter is written on the second leaf of one of the letters.

JDF will be curious to see how the BAAS meeting passes off. He notes in the Athenaeum that Kew Observatory is to be stopped - something JDF 'strongly advocated at Cambridge'. He also notes that Philips has a proposal on reducing the expenses of the meetings. For JDF 'the grand economy to be made is in the Transactions which have become most ponderous and expensive publications'.

Cud Hill House, Upton Saint Leonards, Glos. - Bob has given him great pleasure [by sending him his book "Windfalls"]: finds himself drawn first to the essays with personal names: Browning, Virginia Woolf, Meredith; these are all '[d]elightful', with '[s]uch sensitive discrimination in the literary criticism', combined with 'personal pictures - so vivid', such as 'Meredith's thumps with his stick in honour of the lovely Lucy Duff Gordon'; asks which of Meinhold's works Duff Gordon translated. Praises Bob's literary criticism: calls his defence of rhetoric 'timely needed & excelled'; might not have had Marlowe and the University poets 'without the Schools of Rhetoric of Oxford & Cambridge', and without Marlowe, there might have been no Shakespeare. Comments on 'how neatly' Bob 'refute[s] Edgar Poe's heresy!'. Likes what Bob says about Shelley's "Music when soft voices die": has sometimes read the last stanza as 'addressed by Shelley to himself'; cites 'Less oft is peace in Shelley's mind...' [from "To Jane: The Recollection"] as another instance of self-address. Diana [his wife] and the children are going to Sennen at Land's End on Monday; he himself is not, since he always finds South Cornwall 'too damp'; will go instead to the 'Brit[ish] Ass[ociation for the Advancement of Science]' in Broghton from 7-14 September. His eldest son [Oliver] is engaged to be married to Rosemary Phipps, a 'charming girl' living at Fairford on the upper Thames; she and Oliver have been to visit. Tom [his other son] is staying with Lodge's sister [Barbara Godlee?] near Manchester, but will join the rest of the family in Cornwall. He is 'very musical-studying'. Bob's grandson Philip is here, playing in the garden with Colin; he is a 'dear little boy'. Sends love to both Trevelyans; hope Bob's has a 'good holiday & enjoy[s] Italy'. Asks if 'the cause of Virginia Woolf's death [was] ever known'. Adds a postscript to say her heard a 'marvellous Beethoven piece' on the radio last night, the String Quartet in B flat, Op. 18 no. 6.

Greenhill, Edinburgh - Thanks for WW's long letter of December 16. JDF believes 'there is no branch of knowledge more likely to benefit by the exertions of a Society, such as the British Association than Meteorology: - a body indeed was wanting in this country to direct the efforts of detached individuals, and to point out to its own members the mode in which their particular exertions may conduce to a general end'. JDF agrees with WW as to the present unsatisfactory state of Meteorology. JDF hopes to soon put forward some interesting trains of research, especially 'in relation to the conducting power of bodies for heat - the thermo electricity of homogeneous metals and have other electric relations'. In his Meteorological Report for the BAAS meeting at Oxford later this year he will either show the progress of the science or give a complete view of its present state: 'My present idea is to confine the actual and formal report, to the advances made in the science during the last two or three years. But besides to guide a sketch of the present state and future prospects of the sciences', and 'to shew how far previous labours have been misdirected'. JDF's ideas on several specific branches which require production, can be found in the meteorological queries which he drew up for the Report of the Association: 'I have there painted out (quite in conformity with your views) the necessity of some one of sufficient talent taking up the Theory of Hygrometry from the beginning discussing the workings of his predecessors and establishing on the basis of experiment, the correspondence between the moist-bulb and [dew point] hygrometer; which problem contains I believe the whole essential basis of the science'. JDF will now got to far into the general theory of the subject in the report. He has been looking a great deal at the construction of instruments and is about to be involved in a comparison of standard thermometers.

Boroughbridge - Thanks WW for his kind letter . 'I rejoice to say that it [the first BAAS meeting at York] has gone off in a way which left nothing to wish' - despite the absence of so many leading British men of science. Vernon Harcourt, 'one of the most interesting men I have here met with has the entire merit of the 'British Association' which is now fairly set on foot'. JDF is pleased to say that the Archbishop and clergy have also shown the utmost warmth for the objects of the meeting. Next year is fixed for Oxford: William Buckland is to be President and both WW and David Brewster have been elected Vice-Presidents.

Paper given by Sidgwick on 4 Sept 1886, at the 56th meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, held in Birmingham. Published in 1887 by John Murray.

With emendations.

Printed and completed in manuscript.

Brompton - GC is 'so immersed in the ferment of politics' that he has been slow to respond to AS's circular [possibly a request urging money for education]. The subscription started very modestly and it would have been better to have had a few of the founders attaching a 'few hundreds' to their name. GC Cannot go to the Oxford [BAAS] meeting but hopes it will be in Cambridge next year. This 'British Institute' must 'be studiously and strenuously kept open as a genuine republic of science'.