CHAP. IX.] GLENLAIR, 1857. 267 



and to have your paper, which, if convenient, please to put 

 into my hands, as a matter of form, when ready. 



I have been at several meetings of the Society, but am 

 feeling a little just now the effects of the season and the 

 winter's work, so I shall not be there on the 6th. On the 

 whole, however, I have got through the winter well. 



I shall like much to see your Top, of which I read the 

 account in the Athenaeum. 



Have you observed in that same flippant paper for last 

 Saturday an attack upon Faraday (as it seems to me) of a 

 most presumptuous and ignorant kind ? Though by no 

 means as yet a convert to the views which Faraday main- 

 tains, yet I have so far a general appreciation of them as to 

 believe that this conceited mathematician (some fifteenth 

 Cambridge wrangler, I guess) is ignorant altogether of what 

 Faraday wishes to prove. Always yours sincerely, 



JAMES D. FORBES. 



To C. J. MONRO, Esq. 



Glenlair, Springholm, 

 Dumfries, 20th May 1857. 



I went to Old Aberdeen for Fourier, . . . but I have 

 forgotten what was to be discovered out of him. 



The session went off smoothly enough. I had Sun 

 all the beginning of optics, and worked off all the experi- 

 mental part up to Fraunhofer's lines, which were glorious to 

 see with a water prism I have set up in the form of 

 a cubical box, 5 inch side. The only things not generally 

 done that I attempted last session were the undulatory 

 medium made of bullets for advanced class, and Plateau's 

 experiments on a sphere of oil in a mixture of spirits and 

 water of exactly its own density. 



I succeeded very well with heat. The experiments on 

 latent heat came out very accurate. That was my part, 

 and the class could explain and work out the results better 

 than I expected. Next year I intend to mix experimental 

 physics with mechanics, devoting Tuesday and THURSDAY 



