PLAN OF FIRST VOLUME 179 



Section II. Abstract Mechanics (Perfect solids, fluids, etc.). 



Chap. I. Introductory (I have written this and will let you see it soon). 



II. Statics. 



III. Dynamics (Laws of Motion, NEWTON. Did you ever read 

 his Latin? Do). 



IV. Hydrostatics and Dynamics. 



Section III. Properties of Matter, Elasticity, Capillarity, Cohesion, Gravity, 

 Inertia, etc., etc. (This is to be mine.) 



Section IV. Sound. 



Section V. Light. 



This will give you as good an idea as I yet possess as to the contents of our 

 first volume. All the other physical forces will be included in Vol. II, which will 

 finish up with a great section on the one law of the Universe, the Conservation of 

 Energy. No mathematics will be admitted (except in notes, and these will be more 

 or less copious throughout the volume, being printed in the text but in smaller 

 type). But we shall give very little in that way as my great object in joining 

 Thomson in this work is to have him joined to me in the great work which is to 

 follow, on the Mathematics of Nat. Phil., which I do not believe any living man 

 could attempt alone, not even Helmholtz. 



On September 9, of the same year, when Thomson seems to have 

 been holidaying in Ireland, Tait wrote to Andrews : 



Pray impress on Thomson that he should get home again as soon as possible 

 and get into harness else we cannot begin printing in October as was arranged. 

 I think the first chapter, at least my part of it (for I have not got Thomson's yet), 

 will please you. It has greatly pleased myself. It is all about Motion, Actual and 

 Relative, and such matters as Rotations, Displacements, etc., and I hope to make 

 the large type part of it intelligible even to savages or gorillas. 



It thus appears that, during the few months intervening between the 

 dates of these letters, the plan of the book had somewhat altered. Instead 

 of being Chapter v, Kinematics is to form Chapter i. This was the 

 arrangement finally adopted. 



Tait at once began to prepare his manuscript. On the fly-leaf of one 

 of the large quarto volumes of blue tinted paper which he used in the 

 early days for lecture notes and all kinds of scientific work we find the 

 inscription "Mainly written in 1861-2 for T and T' (rough beginning)," 

 and then below "Since used (1885) for K. T. 1 of Gases." Pasted to the 

 fly-leaf are the two halves of a sheet of foolscap containing a table of 

 contents similar to but differing in detail from the scheme sent in the 



1 That is, "Kinetic Theory." 



23 2 



