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Collingwood - 'Cooke's is in the 5th vol of the Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences [Josiah Parsons Cooke, 'The Relation Between the Atomic Weights', 1854] Whether his classification is a great new step you are a better judge than I am - It was new to me when I read it'. JH gives a brief review of Cooke's theory and those working in the field. JH would be obliged if WW could send him half a page explaining capillary attraction.

Collingwood - JH encloses a note he got from George Airy with a suggestion identical to the course JH 'had prepared to take having first written to the Sec. of the B. Assoc. to enquire with whom we are to communicate on their part'. If WW and Peacock approve he will write to Edward Sabine accordingly. Has WW any 'ideas' generally on magnetic observations: It strikes JH that a great deal of the existing machinery could be dispensed with and 'what we now need is in the nature of magnetic surveys, with a few fixed establishments to keep up connexion between the past and future'.

JH congratulates WW on his forthcoming marriage [1 July 1858] to Lady Frances E Affleck.

JH will be sorry if his eldest daughters are absent during WW's visit.

JH and Margaret Herschel will be delighted to see WW. He is very pleased to hear that WW is editing Jones' posthumous works - JH has some sheets of RJ's lectures which went to the press but were never published. He is grieved to hear that George Peacock is so ill. 'What a queer book that is of Herbert Spencer!'

35 Bedford Place, Russell Sq. - On the possibility of JH's son (Alexander Herschel) entering Trinity College in October 1855: 'I am sure at present he deserves it - for he is a very good lad and has excellent talents though rather oversensitive and impressionable'.

JH's views of WW's anonymously written Of the Plurality of Worlds: An Essay, 1853: 'I can't give in my adhesion to the doctrine that between this and the angelic there are not some dozen or two grades of intellectual and moral creatures'. As for his own existence it 'is limited now to the one and only idea of making money'.

32 Harley Street - JH, Ryan [Edward Ryan?], J. S. Lefevre, T. L. Hodges and JH have concluded that 'a letter drawn up by Lefevre on a full knowledge of all the circumstances should be signed by some of Jones' friends and handed in to Lord J. Russell personally by Mr. Hodges [concerning RJ's work on the Tithe Commission?].

32 Harley Street - JH hopes to dine with two representatives of French Science in the Jury of Philosophical Instruments on Saturday followed by a visit to Lord Rosse's [William Parsons, 3rd Earl of Rosse] - can WW join them?

Hind [John Russell Hind] and Bishop [George Bishop] are delighted with WW's 'name Eviene (vulgo Irene) for the new planet'.

32 Harley Street - JH has made a 'trifling alteration' to WW's tide paper, and if WW does not approve he should inform the printers: 'and so ends my editorship of edn. II' [John Herschel ed., Admiralty Manual of Scientific Enquiry, 1849].

32 Harley Street - JH thinks both WW's and Frederick Beechey's respective forms for tide registry liable to mistakes [John Herschel ed., Admiralty Manual of Scientific Enquiry, 1849]. He therefore proposes an alternative version which he has enclosed.

32 Harley Street - JH did not mean to imply that the observer using WW's tide paper in the Admiralty Manual [John Herschel ed., Admiralty Manual of Scientific Enquiry, 1849] should be familiar with all WW's tide papers in the Phil. Trans., but that his tide registry table cannot be at once and simply filled in from observation. It is a registry of results. Each entry is a conclusion from many readings of the tide gage and the clock'. If WW does not approve of Frederick Beechey's forms then he should give some other form. For the methodical observation of the heights and time of high and low water it is best to have printed forms.

32 Harley Street - JH does not think that WW's and Frederick Beechey's two forms of tide registry are inconsistent 'only that they are each a more condensed abstract of the other with some additional matter in the way of conclusions drawn'. Beechey provides two forms, of which, WW's form can be filled in from the second -''Registry of tides -...for the month''. WW thanks JH for his political economy concerning the question of exchanges and currency: 'I think you and Jacob [William Jacob] overestimate the 'wear and tear'. There is a distinction - Fair wear and tear is I apprehend very small and as for what is lost by unfair it is only lost to the coin but not to the stock of Bullion in the country as it goes forthwith...into the melting pot and thence into the market'. JH wants WW's notion of a decimal coinage.

32 Harley Street - When JH has received both WW's and Frederick Beechey's revised papers for the Admiralty Manual [John Herschel ed., Admiralty Manual of Scientific Enquiry, 1849], he 'will see how far he can 'bring to a consistency' the forms of tide Registry in both' works. JH is glad WW is working on the mathematical considerations of Political Economy ['Mathematical Exposition of some Doctrines of Political Economy: second Memoir', Transactions of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, 1850]: 'I hope you will work out the true differential equations of supply, demand, fertility and stimulus'. JH does not know how far the duties of his new job - Master of the Mint - will affect his former life.

JH cannot alter Frederick Beechey's paper without his request and he does not know his address.

Although Murray [book publishers] have not written to JH requesting a new edition of the Admiralty Manual [John Herschel ed., Admiralty Manual of Scientific Enquiry, 1849], JH will send any alterations WW has to his tide paper to Murray.

Collingwood - JH is familiar with the action of air and light on the sulphuret of lead. He has taken service in the Royal Commission on the Universities: 'if moderate men and well disposed to the Universities were all to decline, the alternative must be the appointment of people not so disposed - to the great detriment of the cause of sound principles and learning'.

Collingwood - Thanks WW for his paper on Aristotle: 'Strange he should have come so near Bacon and yet so aloof from him'. JH suggests to WW that he has shifted his 'meaning somewhat in what you understand by the term 'a conception''. Lord J. [Jefferies] has not nor anybody else consulted him about the visitation .

Collingwood - Thanks WW for his two papers. JH did not think Hegel 'had been quite so shallow and conceited'. There are quite a few people who set up Kepler in Newton's place who have never heard of Hegel: they need to be taught 'what is meant by science'. JH gives a problem suggested by a method calculating double star orbits which requires an intrinsic equation.

3 Henrietta St., Covent Garden - JH requires WW's signature for business concerning his trust fund and marriage settlement [see Few and Co. Solicitors to WW, 16 Feb. 1849].

Collingwood - JH has got WW's proofs and gives his suggestions for improving his tide paper for the Admiralty Manual [John Herschel ed., Admiralty Manual of Scientific Enquiry, 1849]. He has not yet got Frederick Beechey's proofs. Does WW 'think 1 or 2 days enough in a quite strong locality to decide that the tides are regular?' JH gives his view of Neptune's orbit.

Collingwood - JH does not think his views differ very much from [Robert L.] Ellis: 'I readily accept his 'hierarchy of causes' and I am quite willing to receive mechanical force as the cause ultimately set in action'. Bodies affect our senses by 'impressing mechanical movements in the nerves'. By 'qualitative action' JH meant 'changes induced on the exercise of forces among the molecules of bodies - alterations of their dynamical energies which alterations I conceive cannot be the result of mere mechanical force which can but push and pull a particle but cannot alter its power to push and pull another, either temporarily or permanently'. JH thinks it likely that when a copper wire acts on a magnetic needle, a power of attraction and repulsion may be transcently communicated to its molecules. Ellis's views 'that one molecule of matter may communicate to another properties itself possesses falls in very well with this and thus power may be propagated along a chain of molecules', but he does not see what the relevance of A's motion to B 'has to do with A's power to impart to B a power to exert force'. Faraday's 'inductive action of magnetic currents effectually destroys the usual dynamical relation between force time and velocity for it makes the force by which a particle A of one wire acts on a particle B of another dependent on the relative velocity and direction of A's motion with respect to B'.

Collingwood - WW's tide paper for the Admiralty Manual is 'anything but too long' - should he not also include something on specialities about insular tides, peculiarities at particular localities, tides up rivers and observations of bores whenever they may occur.

Collingwood - Advice to WW on the requirements for the Admiralty Manual [see JH to WW, 27 Dec. 1847].

Collingwood - Lord Auckland has requested JH to organise and edit 'a manual of scientific desiderata and queries to be placed in the hands of officers employed in surveying and exploring expeditions and on other similar services in which useful information may be collected'. JH understands that Lord Auckland asked WW to do something on tides - has he prepared anything yet?

Collingwood - JH gives his reasons why WW should not, as has been reported, pledge such a strong declaration of support for John C Adams's and the 'discovery' of Neptune over [Urbain J. J.] Le Verrier: If the results of the latter had not 'appeared I think it by no means improbable that Challis might actually never have turned a telescope to the heavens in search of it at all'.

Collingwood - JH is glad WW is coming to Southampton for the BAAS meeting 'with a paper in your pocket'. JH has 250-260 pages of his Cape work finished and most of the plates [Results of Astronomical Observations made during the years 1834-8 at the Cape of Good Hope, 1847].

Collingwood - JH thanks WW for his 'Lectures on Systematic Morality' [1846]: 'I see you have chapters on the relation of Church and State and on International Law...on both subjects I have not yet quite made up my faggot of opinions - a confession by the bye I would not make to every body'.

Collingwood - JH has been so engrossed in double star orbits that he has neglected to reply to WW's letter. He has succeeded in simplifying his method of graphical projection to a point which satisfies him. A university course of mathematics is best examined in subject than in books. JH agrees with WW's list of great mathematical works but would add 'the great Lacroix'. He does not think George Airy's tracts should be included under the category of 'authority' 'unless the said author were at least 70 years old unless his book had acquired some very high and commanding reputation as a work of original discovery'. JH agrees that students do not have the time or maturity to grasp the whole of mathematics, and thus a university education should concentrate on the fundamentals but still allow room for the specialities. He is glad that WW 'prefer influencing the state of public opinion both in and out of the university on this subject through the medium of the press to applying for any direct authority from the university to enforce your views at least at present'.