Item 63 - James David Forbes to William Whewell

2 pp

Edinburgh - Thanks WW for the letter he wrote in support of JDF's glacier theory: 'which has relieved more than anything else could possibly have done the annoyance which I have felt about Hopkins [William Hopkins]'. He encloses a paper he has written on a theory of adaptation and the 'infactuation which optical writers have had to insist on a Density connection of spherical aberration - when there was not the least reason to imagine that there was one spherical surface in the eye' [On a Possible Explanation of the Adaption of the Eye to Distinct Vision at Different Distances, Trans. of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, 1845, see JDF to WW, 8 Jan. 1845].