From:
Ada Byron (King)
To:
Mary Somerville
Date:
2 Dec 1836
Source of text:
MSBY 3 / 74, Dep. c. 367, Bod, MS
Summary:
No summary available.
Contributor:
Brigitte Stenhouse
No summary available.
No summary available.
Reports on his tidal studies and requests further observations from South Africa. WW's history of the inductive sciences is in press and WW has begun a philosophy of the inductive sciences. Discusses Richard Jones's career and Charles Darwin's return to England.
Please convey thanks to the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge for its star maps. Finds them preferable to [Johann] Bode's maps, 'which are full of egregious errors.'
Dinner at the Hensleigh Wedgwoods’. They have agreed to go over his journal. Henry Holland thinks it not worth publishing alone because it goes over FitzRoy’s ground.
His impressions of Harriet Martineau: "She is overwhelmed with her own projects, her own thoughts and own abilities."
Regarding the gales which swept England at the end of November.
No summary available.
No summary available.
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Informs WDF of his activities since the Beagle landed.
No summary available.
Introduces [Charles?] Cameron. Received angry and excited letter from Charles Babbage. Discusses barometers. Heard Herschels may be travelling to Rio de Janeiro.
Setting a unit of measurement for solar radiation (the 'actine'); proposes to 'take for a unit of solar heat that which if all employed in heating a cubic inch of water exposing a horizontal surface of one square inch, to a vertical Sun during one minute would produce a dilation of one thousandth part of its volume.'
Definition at the Observatory last night was abominable; therefore no comparisons can be made between the stations. Much obliged for the details of the actinometer. Will call on JH later.
The Darwin family are anxious for FEEW’s and Hensleigh’s opinions of CD’s journal. EW is convinced that Henry Holland is wrong if he thinks it not worth publishing.
"Mr Darwin presents his compliments to the Master & Fellows of Caius Coll. and is extremely sorry he is prevented by a previous engagement the honor of dining with them on Thursday."
"Read a letter [to AC] of the 19th Instant from Mr Charles Darwin of Christs College, Cambridge stating that understanding from the Conservators that a Series of fossil Bones collected during the voyage of H: M: Surveying Vessel Beagle possesses a peculiar Interest as connected with Specimens already in the Museum of this College that it had always been his intention to present such Bones to some public collection on the condition that Casts thereof should be given to the leading Public Bodies for the sake of making them more generally useful, specifying the British Museum the Geological Society and the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford, and one set for himself: and that under such Conditions he should be most happy to present the entire series to the Museum of this College."
Asks CD’s help in finding a tutor for his son Charles.
Has written to Royal College of Surgeons, exactly as RO recommended, concerning disposition of his South American fossil bones. He fixed on the British Museum, rather than Paris, to receive plaster casts, because he was on board a King’s ship. Suggests RO propose another set for Paris, where they would be more useful than at BM. Has scarcely begun unpacking his cases.