Answer ^<1>

Bernard S^tr

R. Sq. Feb. 6/39

Dear Sir,

I cannot undertake to say what course y^e Council ^<2> will take with regard to your paper. If it had been complete, I might have ventured to anticipate their prompt decision that it should be printed: but, in its present form, I fear there will be great difficulties in y^e way of its publication in y^e Transactions. You are, no doubt, perfectly warranted in withholding from y^e public the disclosure of y^e processes of which yoq have described the results in that paper: but from what I can collect of y^e opinions of the members of y^e Council, I rather believe they would think it best to defer its publication until you can render it complete by y^e communication of y^e processes themselves.

Perhaps, under these circumstances, you will deem it advisable to withdraw y^e paper for the present, before a ballot is taken on the question of its publication.

I remain Dear Sir
yours very truly

P. M. R.

<at bottom, inverted: M^r H.F. Talbot

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Notes:

1. This letter is a draft reply to Doc. No: 03791.

2. The council of the Royal Society objected to WHFT’s proposal to publish the whole of the paper ‘Some Account of the Art of Photogenic Drawing’, which was read before the Society on 31st January 1839.