iv Proceedings. {^October lyth, igii. 



Ordinary Meeting, October 17th, 1911. 



The President, Professor F. E. Weiss, D.Sc, F.L.S., 

 in the Chair. 



A vote of thanks was given to the donors of the books upon 

 the table. 



Mr. Francis Nicholson, F.Z.S., stated that he had recently 

 become possessed of a most interesting letter written by John 

 Dalton shortly after he had become a resident in Manchester, 

 and before he joined this Society on which he was afterwards to 

 shed so much lustre. 



This letter appears to have been known to Dr. Lonsdale, 

 for it is quoted by him in his life of Dalton in "The Worthies of 

 Cumberland," but perhaps it has not really lessened its interest, 

 for Dr. Lonsdale did not print it exactly verbatim, and, moreover, 

 he split it up so that portions of it are in three different chapters. 

 It is also reproduced in Roscoe's '' Life of Dalton," but again in 

 separate parts. 



The letter is dated in Quaker fashion, " 2nd mo. 20th 1794," 

 and is closely written on three pages of foolscap, the four con- 

 cluding lines, the signature, and the address being on the fourth 

 page. Elihu Robinson, of Eaglesfield, near Cockermouth, 

 to whom it is addressed, is the person to whom Dalton owed 

 most in his early intellectual development. Like Dalton, he was 

 a Friend, and as he is styled " Dear Cousin " was presumably a 

 relation of Dalton's. 



The letter opens with an account of the "Manchester 

 Academy," now " Manchester College," Oxford, then in Mosley 

 Street, where Dalton, who had been appointed in 1793, was 

 Tutor in Mathematics and Natural Philosophy. Many of the 

 persons interested in the Academy were founders and early 

 members of this Society, and it is mostly owing to them that 

 Dalton was proposed and elected to be one of its members. 

 The first paper he read before the Society — one on colour 



