Item 30 - James David Forbes to William Whewell

Edinburgh - JDF thanks WW for all his support over the years and for his recent intervention in ensuring JDF's paper [On the Hot Springs of the Pyrenees and the Verification of Thermometers] was published in the next part of the Transactions of the Royal Society [see JDF to WW, 21 Sept. 1836]. In connection with the proceedings of the BAAS meeting at Bristol, JDF has 'got 12 Thermometers from 3 to 26 feet long, ready for the rites of sepulture'. One set are to lie in a 'warm bed of Trap' rock at the observatory, another in the 'hard cold sandstone of Craig Leith'; and a third set in the 'softly repose in a deep bed of perfectly uniform, dry, incoherent sand. How often do you think they should be observed?' JDF has subjected his magnetic observations taken at the Alps and the Pyrenees to calculation and has found a 'distinct indication of a diminution of intensity of about 1/1000 part, for 3000 feet of ascent'. Jean Baptiste Biot has written a very interesting paper about astronomical refractions. JDF hopes to apply Biot's methods to his observations with the actinometer on the extinction of light in the atmosphere. Has WW seen Lloyd's [Humphrey Lloyd] six lectures on the wave theory?: 'It seems to be done in a style much wanted as a model for English works of the kind'. JDF is really looking forward to WW's 'Opus Magnus' [The History of the Inductive Sciences, from the Earliest to the Present Time, 3 vols, 1837]. What does WW think of the Metropolitan University: 'will it have any effect upon Oxford or Cambridge? If it can hurt anybody it will be our medical schools. Has Murphy [Robert Murphy] got the London College Chair. He wrote to me for a certificate which I declined on the ground of insufficient acquaintance with his department of the Pure Mathematics'.