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Document number: 6206
Date: 22 Jan 1849
Recipient: TALBOT William Henry Fox
Author: BREWSTER David
Collection: National Science and Media Museum, Bradford
Collection number: 1937-4970
Last updated: 7th March 2012

Dear Sir,

I send you one or two specimens of Topaz containing the two new fluids. <1> They are not so good as I could have wished but you will be able distinctly to see the leading phenomena.
1. The two immiscible Fluids
2. The Expansible fluid with its cavity which fills up with the heat of 60o or thereabouts
Some of the cavities in these specimens are very good.

The misprint of mirror for mineral in my paper was a stupid oversight. I could not get a better word than serrated to express a very singular and ill defined appearance of tints like the teeth of a saw [diagram].

The Phil. Mag. <2> is a discredit to the Journalism of the country. Every month I resolve to withdraw my name, and then I forget the resolution, not being willing to distress Mr Taylor. <3>

I spoke to Dr Lyon about establishing a good journal to be both Physical & Chemical, but there seem to be no active persons in London with sufficient zeal to carry it on.

While there is a Journal in Cambridge for purely mathematical Papers, it is absurd to place them in a popular Journal like the Phil. Magazine.

What has become of the Review of your Work <4> that was to appear in the North British Review. <5> It is about to change its Editor. <6>

Can you tell me any thing about the Revd Mr Bridges <7> who has executed some fine Talbotypes. My youngest Son<8> has lately met him at Athens, and gives a very interesting account of him.

I am Dear Sir Ever Most Truly Yrs
D Brewster

St Leonard's College
St Andrews
Jany 22d 1849

H.F. Talbot Esqr
&c &c &c


Notes:

1. See D. Brewster, ‘On the existence of Crystals with different primitive forms and physical properties in the cavities of minerals; with additional observations on the new fluids in which they occur’, Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, v. 16, 1849, pp. 11–22. [A paper read in 1845, with subsequent additions.]

2. Philosophical Magazine.

3. Richard Taylor (1781–1858), publisher & naturalist.

4. Possibly of WHFT, English Etymologies (London: J. Murray, 1847). See Doc. No: 06048.

5. At the time, a journal of the Free Church.

6. William Hanna (1808–1882) had taken over the editorship in 1847.

7. Rev George Wilson Bridges (1788–1863), photographer & traveller.

8. Henry Craigie Brewster (1816-1905), a captain the Royal Scots, and, like his father, an amateur scientist and a calotypist.

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