of the light in the two rays of
Quartz' was communicated to the Philosophical Society: a capital piece
of deductive optics. On Mar. 2nd I went to London, I suppose to
attend the Board of Visitors (which met frequently, for the proposed
reform of Pond's Observations, &c.). As I returned on the outside of
the coach there occurred to me a very remarkable deduction from my
ideas about the rays of Quartz, which I soon tried with success, and
it is printed as an Appendix to the Paper above mentioned. On Mar. 6th
my son George Richard was born."

Miscellaneous matters in the first half of this year are as follows:

"Faraday sends me a piece of glass for Amici (he had sent me a piece
before).--On Apr. 9th I dispatched the Preface of my 1830
Observations: this implies that all was printed.--On Apr. 18th I began
my Lectures and finished on May 24th. There were 49 names. A very good
series of lectures.--I think it was immediately after this, at the
Visitation of the Cambridge Observatory, that F. Baily and Lieut.
Stratford were present, and that Sheepshanks went to Tharfield on the
Royston Downs to fire powder signals to be seen at Biggleswade (by
Maclear) and at Bedford (by Capt. Smyth) as well as by us at
Cambridge.--On May 14th I received _L100_ for my article on the Figure
of the Earth from Baldwin the publisher of the Encyclopaedia
Metropolitana.--I attended the Greenwich Visitation on June 3rd.--On
June 30th the Observatory Syndicate made their report: satisfactory.

"On July 6th 1831 I started with my wife and infant son for Edensor,
and went on alone to Liverpool. I left for Dublin on the day on which
the loss of the 'Rothsay Castle' was telegraphed, and had a bad
voyage, which made me ill during my whole absence. After a little stay
in Dublin I went to Armagh to visit Dr Robinson, and thence to
Coleraine and the Giant's Causeway, returning by Belfast and Dublin to
Edensor. We returned to Cambridge on Sept. 9th.

"Up to this time the Observatory was furnished with only one large
instrument, namely the 10-foot Transit. On Feb. 24th of this year I
had received from Thomas Jones (62, Charing Cross) a sketch of the
stone pier for mounting the Equatoreal which he was commissioned to
make: and the pier was prepared in the spring or summer. On Sept. 20th
part of the instrument was sent to the Observatory; other parts
followed, and Jones himself came to mount it. On Sept. 16th I received
Simms's assurance that he was hastening