Petersburg, and so to Pulkowa, where I lodged with O. Struve.  I was here engaged till Sept. 4th, in the Observatory, in expeditions in the neighbourhood and at St Petersburg, and at dinner-parties, &c.  I met Count Colloredo, Count Ouvaroff, Count Stroganoff, Lord Bloomfield (British Ambassador), and others.  On Sept. 4th I went in a small steamer to Cronstadt, and then in the Vladimir to Swinemuende:  we were then towed in a passage boat to Stettin, and I proceeded by railway to Berlin.  On Sept. 9th I found Galle and saw the Observatory.  On Sept. 10th I went to Potzdam and saw Humboldt.  On the 12th I went to Hamburg and lodged with Schumacher:  I here visited Repsold and Ruemker.  On Sept. 14th I embarked in the John Bull for London, and arrived there on the evening of the 18th:  on the 16th it was blowing ‘a whole gale,’ reported to be the heaviest gale known for so many hours; 4 bullocks and 24 sheep were thrown overboard.—­From Dec. 3rd to 8th I was at Cambridge, and from the 22nd to 31st at Playford.”

* * * * *

Here is a letter to his wife written from Birmingham, containing a note of the progress of the ironwork for the Menai Bridge: 

EDGBASTON, BIRMINGHAM,
1847, Apr. 22.

Yesterday morning we started between 10 and 11 for Stourbridge, first to see some clay which is celebrated all over the world as the only clay which is fit to make pots for melting glass, &c.  You know that in all these fiery regions, fire-clay is a thing of very great importance, as no furnace will stand if made of any ordinary bricks (and even with the fire-clay, the small furnaces are examined every week), but this Stourbridge clay is as superior to fire-clay as fire-clay is to common brick-earth.  Then we went to Fosters’ puddling and rolling works near Stourbridge.  These are on a very large scale:  of course much that we saw was a repetition of what we had seen before, but there were slitting mills, machines for rolling the puddled blooms instead of hammering them, &c., and we had the satisfaction of handling the puddling irons ourselves.  Then we went to another work of the Fosters not far from Dudley, where part of the work of the Tube Bridge for the Menai is going on.  The Fosters are, I believe, the largest iron masters in the country, and the two principal partners, the elder Mr Foster and his Nephew, accompanied us in all our inspections and steppings from one set of works to another.  The length of Tube Bridge which they have in hand here is only 120 feet, about 1/4 of the whole length:  and at present they are only busy on the bottom part of it:  but it is a prodigious thing.  I shall be anxious about it.  Then we went to other works of the Fosters’ at King’s Wynford, where they have blast furnaces:  and here after seeing all other usual things we saw the furnaces tapped.  In this district the Fosters work the 10-yard coal in a way different from any body else:  they work out the upper half of its thickness and then