Item 2 - James David Forbes to William Whewell

4 pp

Boroughmuirhead, nr. Edinburgh - JDF thanks WW for his letter and is very satisfied with his recommendations to his queries [see JDF to WW, 29 May 1831]. He has subsequently purchased a copy of Poisson [S. D. Poisson's Traite de Mechanique, 1811?]. JDF has been studying some of the more difficult parts of the Integral Calculus: completing a paper on the barometer, and conducting an 'experimental examination of a curious question on heat which appears to me to be yet quite unexplained'. JDF read WW's paper on David Ricardo 'with a great deal of pleasure', and gives some minor corrections [Mathematical Exposition of some of the Leading Doctrines in Mr Ricardo's Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, 1831]. The Edinburgh University library has an incomplete collection of the Transactions of the Cambridge Philosophical Society and would like WW to forward the missing volumes. He hopes WW will make the first BAAS meeting at York. 'Is Herschel's [John Herschel] Treatise on finite differences only to be found in his translation of Lacroix, which is now very scarce?'.