and I would select professors.  We had a great deal of correspondence, meetings, examination of testimonials, &c., and on August 14th we agreed on Wilson, Rowe, McCoy, and Hearn.—­On Feb. 17th I received the Prussian Order of Merit.—­I had correspondence with the Treasury on the scale to be adopted for the Maps of the British Survey.  I proposed 1/3000, and for some purposes 1/600.—­I printed a Paper on the Deluge, in which I shewed (I believe to certainty) that the Deluge of Genesis was merely a Destructive Flood of the Nile.—­Being well acquainted with the mountains of Cumberland, I had remarked that a ‘man’ or cairn of stones erected by the Ordnance Surveyors on the Great Gable had covered up a curious natural stone trough, known as one of the remarkable singularities of the country.  This year, without giving any notice to the Ordnance Surveyors, I sent two wallers from Borrowdale to the mountain top, to remove the ‘man’ about 10 feet and expose the trough.  Sir Henry James afterwards approved of my act, and refunded the expense.—­I investigated the optical condition of an eye with conical cornea.

“The Harton Colliery Experiment:  I had long wished to repeat the experiment which I had attempted unsuccessfully in 1826 and 1828, of determining by pendulum-vibrations the measure of gravity at the bottom of a mine.  Residing near Keswick this summer, and having the matter in my mind, I availed myself of an introduction from Dr Leitch to some gentlemen at South Shields, for inspection of the Harton Colliery.  I judged that it would answer pretty well.  I find that on Aug. 11th I wrote to Mr Anderson (lessee of the mine), and on the same day to the Admiralty requesting authority to employ a Greenwich Assistant, and requesting L100 for part payment of expenses.  On August 16th the Admiralty assent.  There were many preparations to be made, both personal and instrumental.  My party consisted of Dunkin (Superintendant), Ellis, Criswick, Simmons, Pogson, and Ruemker:  I did not myself attend the detail of observations.  The observations began on Oct. 2nd and ended on Oct. 21st:  supplementary observations were subsequently made at Greenwich for examining the coefficient of temperature-correction.  On Oct. 24th I gave a Lecture at South Shields on the whole operation.  In ‘Punch’ of Nov. 18th there was an excellent semi-comic account of the experiment, which as I afterwards found was written by Mr Percival Leigh.”

Of private history:  “On Jan. 18th I returned from Playford.  From Mar. 10th to 13th I was at Deal, and visited Sir John Herschel at Hawkhurst.—­From June 28th to Aug. 7th I was staying with my family at The Grange, in Borrowdale near Keswick:  and also made an expedition to Penrith, Carlisle, Newcastle, Jarrow, &c.; and descended the Harton Pit.—­In September and also in October I was at South Shields on the Harton Experiments.—­From Dec. 14th to 18th I was at Cambridge, and on the 26th I went to Playford.”