Most magnanimous,
(For so I think the French call your ancestor “what whopped them so”, though I prefer longanimous in your instance) how comes it to pass that I have heard nothing of you & your Solar Eclipse? <1> I got the translation from the German, (for which thanks) but when I had trimmed it to my modulus, & enclosed it in a letter to the printer, I got my Number from press which filled the two sheets. Now a fly leaf is to be eschewed in all cases, but especially when it changes a 2d postage into a 4d one.
I am reprinting the said Number, & if I can get additional matter from you, & Adams <2> to make something when a quarter sheet, I will add it. But pray let me have what you send quickly, for I have a necessity by no means [illegible], pressing on me, & I must be out whether I am all out or no.
very truly yours
R Sheepshanks
Notes:
1. This was soon published as WHFT, ‘Observations on the Total Eclipse of the Sun on July 28, 1851. Marienburg, Prussia”, Memoirs of the Royal Astronomical Society v. 21 part 1, 1851–1852, pp. 107–113.
2. John Couch Adams (1819–1892), was at the time President of the Royal Astronomical Society and also supplied an observation on the eclipse.
3. Royal Astronomical Society, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London.