CORRESPONDENCE, 1856-06. 291 



Smyth is rather slapdash sometimes. He killed Mezzofanti 1856. 

 in the R.A.S. Annual Report long before that polyglot Mpes 

 implumis set off to leave his card on all the builders of Babel to 

 see if he could manage to pick up a stray dialect or two more 

 than he carried with him. I feel sure that if there had been any 

 revocation of the decree above all in 1818 Libri must have 

 known it. But I will get something yet. The Catholics are 

 evasive on the point. Smyth heard it, no doubt, so have I ; and 

 there is a disposition to have it believed among the R. C. 



Page 51. In p. 19 of my notes on the Antegalileans I have 

 given a better account of Digges, and especially of the edition 

 of 1594, which you seem not to mention. I have it. It has an 

 actual defence of Copernicanism (physical). 



P. 33. I have never seen the perspective of Bacon separately, 

 and so say nothing. But I am not without a silent suspicion 

 that the work published separately is by John Peccam, after- 

 wards Archbishop of Canterbury, a pupil probably of R. Bacon. 



P. 47. The acceptance of the motion of light is not pro re 

 natd ; the motion of light is first proved by Jupiter's satellites, 

 which establish geometrically a motion of the effect called light ; 

 and then, with the velocity inferred of the effect, the aberration 

 is explained in quantity and quality both. There is not even 

 the assumption that light is material. Measured motion is 

 geometry, not physics. . . . 



Yours very truly, 



A. DE MORGAN. 



To Sir John HerscheL 



7 Camden Street, Nov. 13, 1856. 



MY DEAR SIR JOHN, I am glad to hear you are getting on. 

 I think you should not do too much in the way of being a free 

 body in the morning. The evening phenomena are fatigue. 



I doubt your prognostic about the coinage. I think you may 

 be eatable by the time it comes. It is getting into country schools 

 and colleges, and I think people are learning it. The House of 

 Commons will probably be tried again next session. 



As to how you might cook next century, you remind me of 

 an experiment I have often thought of mummy soup. The 

 muscular fibre which remains must be partially soluble in water, 

 I should think. I should like to catch some of the Fee-Jee 

 Islanders if that be the way to spell it and feed them on the 



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