6358 PROFESSOR PIAZZI SMYTH ON THE 
Forbes of the Edinburgh University ; and if there was any one thing in Nature 
or Art which that eminent Natural Philosopher understood more intimately 
than another, it was the making of observations upon heat. Every one there- 
fore of that day was perfectly satisfied with his being the sole scientist to give 
the design, and in the then resident member of the Abie firm, viz. Mr JoHn 
Ani, being the mechanical artist to execute it. 
But when, after the lapse of forty years, our calamity of 1876 occurred, and 
leave was after a while, or in 1877, granted by Government to get a new set of 
this species of thermometer made,—both Jamrs Davip Forses and the humbler 
Joun ADIE had long since passed away, and no one had applied meanwhile for 
any more of such colossal instruments. The still continuing firm however of 
AviE & Son bravely undertook the new order ; Mr Ricuarp ADIE occasionally 
came here from his establishment in Liverpool, and I am breaking no con- 
fidences, and doing that firm more good than harm in saying further,—that they 
have now in Edinburgh as foreman, one who, still young and rising, has been 
found equal to the occasion ; who entered into the work with a fine enthusiasm, 
and continued either to perform, or immediately superintend every part of it, 
up to its successful termination,—this person being Mr Toomas WEDDERBURN. 
Now it is said to be a general law of human nature, that the very same 
works or events are intuitively described by different men according to their 
own several parts and responsibilities therein. Wherefore, to obtain a good 
account of the real making of these long thermometers (the longest of them 
several feet longer in the stem than the hall of this Society is high), it was my 
duty, not to try to write the account myself, but to go to the practical artist in 
the matter, viz., Mr WEpDERBURN, and ask him for his account of his own 
doings. 
Accordingly at the end of this paper I have to thank him for enabling me to 
give, after a copy of the contract, and then some comprehensive remarks by Mr 
RicHarD ADIE,—his own, Mr WEDDERBURN’S, account of how every thing was 
done, from the first clearing out of the old bore-hole 3 to 5 inches in diameter 
and 26°5 feet deep in the solid porphyry rock of the Calton Hill, to the final 
placing of the new set of thermometers therein, after two winters of anxious, 
careful testing of the zero points and deciding on the scales. 
All that, together with many naive and very much to the purpose remarks 
on the several practical processes that had to be gone through, should be 
read, when printed, in Mr WeEppERBURN’s own words, which are authorita- 
tive there. But now when his work is over, and the thermometers are in 
regular course of observation at the Royal Observatory, a new class of ques- 
tioners may arise, demanding to be told what it is all for? and why would 
not smaller and cheaper thermometers have answered as well? In which case 
it is I who have to come to the front and try to explain. 
