144 
Although it would afford me gratification to have my 
name associated with so able an experimenter as yourself, 
yet I cannot consent to have it attached to any document 
to which I am not a contributor. You are sensible I am no 
mathematician, and on that account cannot afford to lose a 
single fraction of the small offerings I have made at the 
shrine of science. It is different with my friend Hodgkin- 
son, whose colossal dimensions might stand paring and is 
not so easily reduced. The fact is, I must be permitted to 
rest upon such humble merits as I possess, and not in a 
character which the world might justly call assumed. If 
you think my name can be respectably and justly intro- 
duced as a coadjutor in the more simple forms of transverse 
strain, I am satisfied : if otherwise, I will then take the 
experiments on temperature, continued strains, &c., and 
leave all the other to a mind of much greater profundity 
than my own. 
London, Aug. 17th, 1843. 
My dear Sir, 
(After alluding to a domestic affliction.) Under these 
afflicting circumstances of course you will not expect me at 
Cork. I am however with you in mind, and would have 
been much gratified to have spent not only the days of the 
meeting with you, but to have accompanied you through 
some of the most interesting scenes in Ireland. This how- 
ever cannot be accomplished, and all that I can wish you is 
an agreeable and satisfactory meeting with your scientific 
and learned friends. 
I have written both Mr. Phillips and Mr. Taylor, request- 
ing they will renew the committee with the grant of £150 
for enquiring into the changes produced in metallic bodies 
by concussion. You will have the goodness to support the 
application ; and having collected all the broken axles on 
the Leeds railway and the drawings of a considerable num- 
