BEGINNINGS OF T AND T' 177 



Occasionally in conversation Tait would refer to the manner in 

 which the great work, familiarly known as "T and T'," took form and 

 grew, and to the amusing difficulties which frequently arose, especially 

 when proof-sheets were mislaid. Some of the earlier reminiscences have 

 been fortunately preserved as contemporaneous history in Tail's letters to 

 Andrews. Those letters were all kept, and through the kindness of the 

 Misses Andrews I am able to give in Tait's own language the genesis 

 and early development of the Natural Philosophy. 



The first quotation is taken from a letter of date Dec. 18, 1861 : 



I told Slesser [Tait's successor at Belfast] to tell you that I had agreed to write 

 a joint book on Physics with Thomson. In fact I had nearly arranged the matter 

 with Macmillan, when Thomson, to my great delight, offered to join. 



We contemplate avoiding the extreme details of methods which embarrass the 

 otherwise excellent French books (vide Jamin, Daguin, etc.) and which, though they 

 may have led their authors to results, are not those that would generally be used 

 in verification. Also we propose a volume, quite unique, on Mathematical Physics. 

 I know of no such work in any language and in fact have acquired all my knowledge 

 of the subject by hunting up papers (often contradictory, and more often unsatisfactory) 

 in Journals, Transactions, Proceedings, etc. Such a book is one I would willingly 

 have paid almost any price for during the last ten years but it does not yet exist. 

 And I think that Thomson and I can do it. 



We shall commence printing as soon as we have made arrangements with the 

 Publisher, for our first two volumes will contain simply the essence of the Glasgow 

 and Edinburgh Experimental Lectures blended into (I hope) an harmonious whole. 

 A little difficulty arises at the outset, Thomson is dead against the existence of 

 atoms ; I though not a violent partisan yet find them useful in explanation but 

 I suppose we can mix these views well enough... 



The incidental remark as to Thomson's disbelief in atoms reads 

 strange in these days when we recall how much of Kelvin's later work 

 had to do with the ultimate constitution of matter 1 . For example, before 

 the decade was finished the Vortex Atom, which was suggested to Thomson 

 by Tait's smoke-ring illustrations of Helmholtz's theory of vortex motion 

 (see above, p. 69), had been launched on its chequered voyage in the 

 sea of molecular speculation. 



Through the kindness of Lady Kelvin I am able to give the following 

 extract from a letter from Tait to Thomson of date Jan. 6, 1862: 



I like your draft index to Vol. I very well. I have made a few insertions in 

 it, and may perhaps make more before I send it back redrafted, which I will soon 



1 See however Thomson's paper on "The Nature of Atoms" (Proc. Manchester Lit. and 

 Phil. Society, 1862) quoted in Larmor's Aether and Matter, p. 319. 



T. 23 



