Pièce 121 - James David Forbes to William Whewell

5 pp

Pitlochry, N.B. - JDF saw WW's name on the lists at the BAAS meeting at Dublin: 'I am pleased to find that you still attend occasionally'. JDF's health is not up to the 'hurry, heat, and bustle' of such meetings. He notes from Dr. Lloyd's [Humphrey Lloyd] 'most excellent address', that 'it would appear that the 'Dynamical Theory of Heat' finds much favour at Dublin. Indeed I was surprised at the approbation with which Rankine's theory of 'Molecular Vortices' [W.J.M. Rankine, 'On the Mechanical action of Heat, especially in Gases and Vapours', Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, 20, 1852] was mentioned by Dr Lloyd: 'I cannot say that I ever understood it. But it appeared to me repulsive from its gratuitous assumption and interminable mathematics. I observed also that it was spoken of as an established discovery in the article on De la Rue in the Edinburgh Review'. Is JDF right that WW has unpublished 'schedules of the process of induction for other sciences than astronomy and optics which are published in your philosophy', if so can he at some stage see them.