r Cubitt called on Oct. 4 and Nov. 1;
he was engaged in erecting a treadmill at Cambridge Gaol, and had some
thoughts of sending plans for the Cambridge Observatory, the erection
of which was then proposed. On Nov. 19 I find that I had received from
Cubitt a Nautical Almanac, the first that I had. On Dec. 11 I made
some experiments with Drinkwater: I think it was whirling a glass
containing oil on water. In Classics I was chiefly engaged upon
Thucydides and Homer. On October 6th I had a letter from Charles
Musgrave, introducing Challis, who succeeded me in the Cambridge
Observatory in 1836.
"At this time my poor afflicted father was suffering much from a
severe form of rheumatism or pain in the legs which sometimes
prevented him from going to bed for weeks together.
"On the Commemoration Day, Dec. 18th, I received my prize as
first-class man in Hall again. The next day I walked to Bury, and
passed the winter vacation there and at Playford.
"I returned to Cambridge on Jan. 24th, 1822. On Feb. 12th I kept my
first Act, with great compliments from the Moderator, and with a most
unusually large attendance of auditors. These disputations on
mathematics, in Latin, are now discontinued. On March 20th I kept a
first Opponency against Sandys. About this time I received Buckle, a
Trinity man of my own year, who was generally supposed to come next
after Drinkwater, as pupil. On my sheets I find integrals and
differential equations of every kind, astronomical corrections (of
which I prepared a book), chances, Englefield's comets, investigation
of the brightness within a rainbow, proof of Clairaut's theorem in one
case, metacentres, change of independent variable applied to a
complicated case, generating functions, principal axes. On Apr. 8th I
intended to write an account of my eye: I was then tormented with a
double image, I suppose from some disease of the stomach: and on May
28th I find by a drawing of the appearance of a lamp that the disease
of my eye continued.
"On Feb. 11th I gave Mr Peacock a paper on the alteration of the focal
length of a telescope as directed with or against the Earth's orbital
motion (on the theory of emissions) which was written out for reading
to the Cambridge Philosophical Society on Feb. 24th and 25th. [This
Society I think was then about a year old.] On Feb. 1 my MS. on
Precession, Solar Inequality, and Nutation, was made complete.
"The important examination for Scholarships was now appr
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