However, I am satisfied the good sense of the people is the strongest army our governments can ever have, and that it will not fail them. The commercial convention at Annapolis was not full enough to do business. They found, too, their appointments too narrow, being confined to the article of commerce. They have proposed a meeting at Philadelphia in May, and that it may be authorized to propose amendments of whatever is defective in the federal constitution. When I was in England, I formed a portable copying press, on the principles of the large one they make there, for copying letters. I had a model made there, and it has answered perfectly. A workman here has made several from that model. The itinerant temper of your court will, I think, render one of these useful to you. You must, therefore, do me the favor to accept of one. I have it now in readiness, and shall send it by the way of Bayonne, to the care of Mr. Alexander there, unless Don Miguel de Lardi-zabal can carry it with him. My hand admonishes me it is time to stop, and that I must defer writing to Mr. Barclay till to-morrow. I have the honor to be, with sentiments of the highest esteem and respect, Dear Sir, your most obedient and most humble servant, Th: Jefferson. LETTER XXXVI.--TO MR. VAUGHAN, December 29, 1786 TO MR. VAUGHAN. Paris, December 29, 1786. Sir, When I had the honor of seeing you in London, you were so kind as to permit me to trouble you, sometimes with my letters, and particularly on the subject of mathematical or philosophical instruments. Such a correspondence will be too agreeable to me, and at the same time too useful, not to avail myself of your permission. It has been an opinion pretty generally received among philosophers, that the atmosphere of America is more humid than that of Europe. Monsieur de Buffon makes this hypothesis one of the two pillars whereon he builds his system of the degeneracy of animals in America. Having had occasion to controvert this opinion of his, as to the degeneracy of animals there, I expressed a doubt of the fact assumed, that our climates are more moist. I did not know of any experiments, which might authorize a denial of it. Speaking afterwards on the subject with Dr. Franklin, he mentioned to me the observations he had made on a case of magnets, made for him by Mr. Nairne in London. Of these you will see a detail in the second volume of the American Philosophical Transactions, in a letter from Dr. Franklin to Mr. Nairne, wherein he recommends to him to take up the principle therein explained, and endeavor to make an hygrometer, which, taking slowly the temperature of the atmosphere, shall give its mean degree of moisture, and enable us thus to make with more certainty a comparison between the humidities of different climates. May I presume to trouble you with an inquiry of Mr. Nairne, whether he has executed the Doctor’s idea; and if he has, to get him to make for me a couple of