My Dear Mr Talbot,
It would have given me great pleasure to dine with you on Wednesday, but I do not intend to be in Town on the 2d as I am obliged to be in Edinr on the 8th and the 12th when we go to 78 Great King Street for a few months.
I sent yesterday to the Academy of Sciences <1> some “ Notes on the History of Spectral Analysis <2>”, in which I claim for you the first suggestion on that subject, quoting, verbatim, the last two sentences of your Paper <3> in the Edinburgh Journal of Science dated March 1826 & in vol. V. p. 81. Had I known you were in Edinr I would have sent my Paper to you for revision
It will be published, I think, in the Comptes Rendus <4> of the the 15th of January.
I am, Ever Most Truly Yrs
D Brewster
Allerly
Melrose
Decr 30th 1865
Notes:
1. The French Académie des Sciences.
2. See Doc. No: 08685.
3. W. H. F. Talbot, ‘Some Experiments on Coloured Flames’ (Dated March 1826), Edinburgh Journal of Science v. 5, no. 1, June 1826, pp. 77–81. The last two sentences read ‘For instance, the orange ray may be the effect of the strontia, since Mr Herschel found in the flame of muriate of strontia a ray of that colour.* If this opinion should be correct and applicable to the other definite rays, a glance at the prismatic spectrum of a flame may show it to contain substances which it would otherwise require a laborious chemical analysis to detect. * Edinburgh Transactions, vol. 9, p. 456.‘
4. Comptes Rendus hebdomadaires des séances de l’ de l’Académie des Sciences.