Item 5 - James David Forbes to William Whewell

8 pp

Greenhill, Edinburgh - Thanks for WW's long letter of December 16. JDF believes 'there is no branch of knowledge more likely to benefit by the exertions of a Society, such as the British Association than Meteorology: - a body indeed was wanting in this country to direct the efforts of detached individuals, and to point out to its own members the mode in which their particular exertions may conduce to a general end'. JDF agrees with WW as to the present unsatisfactory state of Meteorology. JDF hopes to soon put forward some interesting trains of research, especially 'in relation to the conducting power of bodies for heat - the thermo electricity of homogeneous metals and have other electric relations'. In his Meteorological Report for the BAAS meeting at Oxford later this year he will either show the progress of the science or give a complete view of its present state: 'My present idea is to confine the actual and formal report, to the advances made in the science during the last two or three years. But besides to guide a sketch of the present state and future prospects of the sciences', and 'to shew how far previous labours have been misdirected'. JDF's ideas on several specific branches which require production, can be found in the meteorological queries which he drew up for the Report of the Association: 'I have there painted out (quite in conformity with your views) the necessity of some one of sufficient talent taking up the Theory of Hygrometry from the beginning discussing the workings of his predecessors and establishing on the basis of experiment, the correspondence between the moist-bulb and [dew point] hygrometer; which problem contains I believe the whole essential basis of the science'. JDF will now got to far into the general theory of the subject in the report. He has been looking a great deal at the construction of instruments and is about to be involved in a comparison of standard thermometers.