During the rest of this year (1846) and the next Faraday did very little research, though he continued his Royal Institution lectures and his reports for Trinity House. Amongst the latter in 1847 was one on a proposal to light buoys by incandescent electric lamps containing a platinum wire spiral. He was compelled, indeed, to rest by a recurrence of brain troubles, giddiness, and loss of memory. Honours however, continued to be heaped upon him both abroad and at home, as the following extract from Bence Jones shows:-- In 1846, for his two great discoveries, the Rumford and the Royal Medals were both awarded to him. This double honour will probably long be unique in the annals of the Royal Society. In former years he had already received the Copley and Royal Medals for his experimental discoveries. As his medals increased it became remarkable that he--who kept his diploma-book, his portraits and letters of scientific men, and everything he had in the most perfect order--seemed to take least care of his most valuable rewards. They were locked up in a box, and might have passed for old iron. Probably he thought, as others did afterwards, that their value, if seen, might lead to their loss. [Sidenote: CRYSTALLINE FORCES.] Between the twenty-first and twenty-second series of “Experimental Researches” nearly three years elapsed. In the autumn of 1848 the matter which claimed investigation was the peculiar behaviour of bismuth in the magnetic field. Certain anomalies were observed which were finally traced to the crystalline nature of the metal, for it appeared that when in that state the crystals themselves--to adopt modern phraseology--showed a greater magnetic permeability in a direction perpendicular to their planes of cleavage than in any direction parallel to those planes. Hence when a crystalline fragment was hung in a _uniform_ magnetic field (where the diamagnetic tendency to move from a strong to a weak region of the field was eliminated), it tended to point in a determinate direction. Faraday expressed it that the structure of the crystal showed a certain “axiality,” and he regarded these effects as presenting evidence of a “magnecrystallic” force, the law of action being that the line or axis of magnecrystallic force tended to place itself parallel to the lines of the magnetic field in which the crystal was placed. Arsenic, antimony, and other crystalline metals were similarly examined. The subject was an intricate one, and there are frequent obscurities in the phraseology tentatively adopted for explaining the phenomena. In one place Faraday rather pathetically laments his imperfect mathematical knowledge. This seems like an echo of his inability to follow the analytical reasoning of Poisson, who, starting from a hypothesis about the supposed “magnetic fluids” being movable within the particles of a body, supposing that these particles were non-spherical and were