From George Gabriel Stokes   24 Dec. 1861

Lensfield Cottage Cambridge | 24 Dec. 1861

My dear Dr. Tyndall,

Although there is a general direction that papers be read in the order of their presentation full power is given to the President¹ to “order otherwise”. If it were convenient to you to bring forward the subject at the Royal Institution on Jan. 17^th that would be sufficient reason, I feel sure, for taking your paper out of its turn.

The 9^th is engaged, or rather the papers for it have been announced, though I hardly expect they will occupy the evening, but I don’t like to take your paper without its having been announced. If the 16^th will suit I have no doubt it can be taken then. The sooner you send in your paper the better that it may be marked as received, and so the order of reading may deviate the less from that according to which it would be taken in its proper turn. Please not to forget that we shall want an abstract.

I don’t know that it is necessary for reception at the R.S. that the paper should not have been read elsewhere (or rather the subject of it given) before it is read at the R.S. but it is better that it should come first before the R.S., or at any rate that it should have been received by the R.S. some time before the subject was given elsewhere. In that case it may well be deemed not the author’s fault that it was not also read.

I have a meeting to attend in a few minutes, and as I don’t like to lose the post I will send off this as it is and write again² about the question of convection in gases.

Yours very truly | G. G. Stokes

RI MS JT/1/S/226