FROM PROFESSOR J. D. FORBES.

                                                                        Edinburgh, 31st March 1857.

     MY DEAR MAXWELL—I have often wished to ask you to tell me how your first session had turned out;    consequently I was exceedingly glad to get your letter this Evening, and to find that you have not been   disappointed in the results of the step to which you kindly say that my assistance was of some use. In what you   say about the monotony of reiteration, I can confidently assure you that your conclusions are quite correct; certain   precautions being, taken which an active mind like yours is sure to fall upon.

     We shall be delighted to see you at the R. S. on the 20th and to have your paper, which, if convenient,   please to put into my hands, as a matter of form, when ready.

     I have been at several meetings of the Society, but am feeling a little just now the effects of the season and the   winter's work, so I shall not be there on the 6th. On the whole, however, I have got through the winter well.

     I shall like much to see your Top, of which I read the account in the Athenæum.

     Have you observed in that same flippant paper for last Saturday an attack upon Faraday (as it seems to me) of a   most presumptuous and ignorant kind? Though by no means as yet a convert to the views which Faraday   maintains, yet I have so far a general appreciation of them as to believe that this conceited mathematician (some   fifteenth Cambridge wrangler, I guess) is ignorant altogether of what Faraday wishes to prove.—Always yours  sincerely,

                                                                               JAMES D. FORBES