WCP6528

[1]

Broadstone, Wimborne

Dec^r 15th. 1907

Dear Prof. Poynting

Thanks for the copy of your paper on the Temperature question, which I have read with great interest, and can follow the reasoning better than in your first Mss.

I hope Johnstone-Stoney's¹ calculations are right. I had his paper, but have mislaid it. My impression was, that all his calculations were ^{based on} for the [2] temperatures at the upper limits of the atmosphere where alone the molecules could begin to escape,— and then of course but slowly — which however, in cosmic eons, would necessarily get rid of any gas that escaped at all.

However even if there is water-vapour, there is [3] as you say, very little probability of there being liquid water — but even if there is only water vapour why is it not detected by the Spectroscope? Lowell evidently expected to find proofs of it.

However if he his or his supporters, have any thing to say, my book & your paper ought to induce them to say it.

Yours very truly | Alfred R. Wallace [signature]

Prof. J.H. Poynting.

[4] (P. turn over.)

Excuse two sheets I turned over the 2 in mistake.

A.R.W.