Stuk 58 - James David Forbes to William Whewell

The Rhine - They are returning home from the continent. JDF hopes to see WW at the BAAS meeting in York. He has carried out some experiments 'which I consider important as establishing directly the flexibility and viscosity of the ice, i.e. that the form of a transverse line even in the compactest part of the glacier does not become zig zag, thus [gives a picture], as it ought to be if the ice was jostled down in fragments but forms a sensibly continuous curve with slight inflections'. William Hopkins's glacier papers suggested these experiments: 'I cannot say I think much of his theory, in so far as it differs from that of viscous motion, and I think he has exaggerated the differences and suppressed the coincidences. I think too that the papers afford an unfortunate specimen of the application of analysis where the ABC of gravity and mechanics would be much better. In this respect they afford I think a very bad example in philosophizing. Several of these so called demonstrations merely repeat what has been formerly plainly said in words'.