“At school he was at first regarded as shy and rather dull. He made no friendships, and he spent his occasional holidays in reading old ballads, drawing curious diagrams, and making rude mechanical models. This absorption in such pursuits, totally unintelligible to his schoolfellows (who were then quite innocent of mathematics), of course procured him a not very complimentary nickname, which I know is still remembered by many Fellows of this Society. About the middle of his school career, however, he surprised his companions by suddenly becoming one of the most brilliant among them, gaining high, and sometimes the highest, prizes for scholarships, mathematics, and English verse composition. From this time forward I became very intimate with him, and we discussed together, with schoolboy enthusiasm, numerous curious problems, among which I remember particularly the various plane sections of a ring or tore, and the form of a cylindrical mirror which should show one his own image unperverted. I still possess some of the MSS. we exchanged in 1846 and early in 1847. Those by Maxwell are on ‘The Conical Pendulum,’ ‘Descartes’ Ovals,’ ‘Meloid and Apioid,’ and ‘Trifocal Curves.’ All are drawn up in strict geometrical form and divided into consecutive propositions. The three latter are connected with his first published paper, communicated by Forbes to this society and printed in our ‘Proceedings,’ vol. ii., under the title, ‘On the Description of Oval Curves and those having a Plurality of Foci’ (1846). At the time when these papers were written he had received no instruction in mathematics beyond a few books of Euclid and the merest elements of algebra.” In November, 1847, Clerk Maxwell entered the University of Edinburgh, learning mathematics from Kelland, natural philosophy from J. D. Forbes, and logic from Sir W. R. Hamilton. At this time, according to Professor Campbell[10]--