received from you about 3 or 4 weeks past a sign of your friendly remembrance, a copy of your paper on the Annual Parallax of Aldebaran.  It pleased me much.  Especially I was delighted with your noble retention of the one equation whose result differed so sensibly from that of the other equations.  It is quite possible, even probable, that the mean result is improved by it.  I have known such instances.  The first, which attracted much attention, was Capt.  Kater’s attempt to establish a scale of longitude in England by reciprocal observations of azimuth between Beachy Head and Dunnose.  The result was evidently erroneous.  But Colonel Colby, on examination of the original papers, found that some observations had been omitted, as suspicious; and that when these were included the mean agreed well with the scale of observation inferred from other methods.”—­In a letter to the Rev. R.C.M.  Rouse, acknowledging the receipt of a geometrical book, there occurs the following paragraph:  “I do not value Euclid’s Elements as a super-excellent book of instruction—­though some important points are better presented in it than in any other book of geometrical instruction that I have seen.  But I value it as a book of strong and distinct reasoning, and of orderly succession of reasonings.  I do not think that there is any book in the world which presents so distinctly the ’because...... therefore.......’  And this is invaluable for the mental education of youth.”—­In May he was in correspondence with Professor Balfour Stewart regarding a projected movement in Terrestrial Magnetism to be submitted to the British Association.  Airy cordially approved of this movement, and supported it to the best of his ability, stating that in his opinion what was mainly wanted was the collation of existing records.—­In January and February he was much pressed by Prof.  Pritchard of Oxford to give his opinion as to the incorrectness of statements made by Dr Kinns in his Lectures on the Scientific Accuracy of the Bible.  Airy refused absolutely to take part in the controversy, but he could not escape from the correspondence which the matter involved:  and this led up to other points connected with the early history of the Israelites, a subject in which he took much interest.

1885

From May 4th to June 3rd he was at Playford.—­From July 2nd to 22nd he was in the Lake District.  The journey was by Windermere to Kentmere, where he made enquiries concerning the Airy family, as it had been concluded with much probability from investigations made by his nephew, the Rev. Basil R. Airy, that the family was settled there at a very early date.  Some persons of the name of Airy were still living there.  He then went on by Coniston and Grasmere to Portinscale, and spent the rest of his time in expeditions amongst the hills and visits to friends.—­On July 28th he went to Woodbridge in Suffolk and distributed the prizes to the boys of the Grammar School there.—­From Oct. 9th to Nov. 12th he was again at Playford.—­Throughout the year he was busily engaged on the Numerical Lunar Theory, and found but little time for miscellaneous reading.