London Institution
June 2d. 1835.
____________
Sir,
I have the pleasure of acknowledging the receipt of your paper on the nature of light for the Philosophical Magazine, <1> in an early number of which I think I can promise its appearance, in the August number, in fact, if not in the next or July number.
Your paper on molecular action which was mislaid here has only just come to hand.<2> I return it together with this note.
In re-preparing it for publication you will, I presume, compare the results stated in it, with Mr. Faraday's Seventh and Eighth Series of Researches in Electricity; and probably a reference to Prof. Powell's paper (also in the Phil. Trans) on the repulsion of heat, and to Mr. Addams's on the same aubject in the Phil. Mag. for May may likewise be useful.
Will you permit me to offer a critical comment on the last page of the paper?- does not the comparitive permanance of the film of condensate vapour of the breath upon "an extremely thin film of glass" laid upon the surface of water result from the temperature of the water being inferior to that of the air, and so preserving the condensation? In all ordinary cases the temperature of the air around it, and of cold water freshly obtained from a cistern it is always so. And if the effect continues with water the temperature of which is equal to that of the air, is may it not be connected with the difference of conducting power for heat between water and air?
I return the original cover of the paper, in case it should be important to you to have a record of its date, that of the cover being June 16, 1834.
May I request your acceptance of a little paper of mine on a subject in part photological: you have probably seen it in Phil. Mag. but the copy I send is revised and has an important correction or two introduced.<3>
I have the honour to be Sir, Respectfully Yours
E. W. Brayley Jnr.
H. F. Talbot, Esqe.
&c &c &c
Notes:
1. WHFT, 'On the Nature of Light,' Philosophical Magazine, ser. 3 v. 7 no. 38, August 1835, pp. 113-118 & 157.
2. The paper had been mis-laid six months before; see Doc. No: 03031. WHFT apparently abandoned it, soon turning his full attention to crystallography. The manuscript, in the hand of WHFT, is titled "On some instances of Molecular Action". It is in a Private collection (FT11316).
3. The enclosed paper has not been located. It was probably a revised copy of Brayley's 'On the Distribution in the Animal Kingdom of the Powers of Producing Heat and Light,' Philosophical Magazine, v. 4, 1835, pp. 241-247.