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Proceedings of the Royal Society 
marriage, and lived a retired life, devoting himself to the care of 
his estates and the education of his son.] 
When I first made Clerk-Maxwell’s acquaintance about thirty-five 
years ago, at the Edinburgh Academy, he was a year before me, 
being in the fifth class while I was in the fourth. 
At school he was at first regarded as shy and rather dull ; he made 
no friendships, and he spent his occasional holidays in reading old 
ballads, drawing curious diagrams, and making rude mechanical 
models. His absorption in such pursuits, totally unintelligible to 
his schoolfellows (who were then quite innocent of mathematics), of 
course procured him a not very complimentary nickname, which I 
know is still remembered by many Eellows of this Society. About 
the middle of his school career, however, he surprised his com- 
panions by suddenly becoming one of the most brilliant among 
them, gaining high, and sometimes the highest, prizes for Scholar- 
ship, Mathematics, and English verse composition. Erom this 
time forward I became very intimate with him, and we discussed 
together, with school-boy enthusiasm, numerous curious problems, 
among which I remember particularly the various plane sections of 
a ring or tore , and the form of a cylindrical mirror which should 
show one his own image unperverted. I still possess some of the 
MSS. which we exchanged in 1846 and early in 1847. Those by 
Maxwell are on “ The Conical Pendulum,” “ Descartes’ Ovals,” 
“ Meloid and Apioid,”and “■ Trifocal Curves.” All are drawn up in 
strict geometrical form and divided into consecutive propositions. 
The three latter are connected with his first published paper, com- 
municated by Eorbes to this Society and printed in our “Proceed- 
ings,” vol. ii., under the title “ On the Description of Oval Curves, 
and those having a plurality of foci” (1846). 
At the time when these papers were written he had received no 
instruction in Mathematics beyond a few books of Euclid, and the 
merest elements of Algebra. 
The winter of 1847 found us together in the classes of Forbes and 
Kelland, where he highly distinguished himself. With the former 
he was a particular favourite, being admitted to the free use of the 
class apparatus for original experiments. He lingered here behind 
most of his former associates, having spent three years at the Univer- 
sity of Edinburgh, working (without any assistance or supervision) 
