46 Dr. von Feilitzsch on the Physical Distinction 



it as my own; nor should I have written at all on the subject, 

 had it not been for the suq^rise occasioned to my mind by falling 

 in wath Professor Stokes's article in the Cambridge and Dublin 

 Mathematical Joimial, to demonstrate the existence of an instan- 

 taneous axis, which proceeds in apparent unconsciousness of the 

 so simply demonstrable law, that any number of rotations of any 

 kind (and therefore those that take place in an instant of time) 

 are representable by a single rotation about a single axis. I 

 shall feel obliged by the early insertion of this explanation, more 

 in justice to myself than to Professor Donkin, whose high and 

 worthily earned reputation, not to speak of the disinterested love 

 of truth for its own sake, apart from personal considerations, 

 which animates the labours of the genuine votary of science, 

 must make him indifferent to whatever credit might be supposed 

 to result from the first authorship or publication of the veiy 

 simple (however important) theorem in cpiestion. 

 I am, Gentlemen, 



Yours faithfully, 

 26 Lincoln's-Inn-Fields, J. J. Sylvester. 



December 1850. 



VIII. On the Physical Distinction of Magnetic and Diamagnetic 

 Bodies. By Dr. von Feilitzsch. 



Royal Institution, 

 My dear Sir, Dec. 24, 1850. 



I HAVE just received the inclosed letter; and though I have 

 not had time to consider the view experimentally, I think 

 it such an important contribution to the philosophy of magnetic 

 and diamagnetic bodies, and am, as always, so anxious to establish 

 the date of a new theory or fact, that I send it to you at once 

 for publication if you think fit. I have left it almost in the 

 author's language, that I might not misstate his view. 

 Ever, my dear Sir, 



Very truly yours, 

 Richard Taylor, Esq., M. Faraday. 



Greifswald in Prussia, Dec. 3, 1850. 



SiB, — If the statement of a new theoiy constitutes progress 

 in science, when the phsenomena already known are brought 

 by it into a point of view leading to new essays to prove or to 

 disprove them, then I hope by my efi"orts to have made an ad- 

 vance, though but small, in that branch which you, the discoverer 

 of diamagnetism, have opened. 



