“MY DEAR MR. HILL,—It has frequently occurred to me that if eight or ten individuals of average intellect were to direct their attention simultaneously and in concert on any specific object which it might be desirable to invent, or any particular subject which it might be useful to explain, their joint efforts might produce a more satisfactory result than the unaided powers of a single person, although such person might be considerably superior to any one of the parties to the combination. I am anxious to try this experiment, and it would give me great pleasure if you would join me in it. “I would propose that you and Coode[77] and I should each choose two associates, to be approved of by us all, and that the nine associates should meet once a month about seven in the evening. “Each should furnish two questions for the consideration of the association, and out of these we would fix on two or three for the subject of each meeting. “One of us should in turn act as the _reporter_ of the meeting, _i.e._, he should be responsible for a statement of the result. “The subjects should, in the first instance, be as simple as possible, and should be such as to be matters of scientific amusement rather than of importance I say this because by adopting this course, if the whole thing fails, we shall only have been amused without having been disappointed. “Let me know at your leisure what you think of this, and do not mention it to any one until you have made up your own mind on its _primâ facie_ practicability. “Yours ever, “J. LEFEVRE.” “I heartily concurred in the suggestion,” Sir Rowland Hill has recorded, “and the first meeting was, I think, held at my house. My nominees were Mr. Wheatstone and my brother Edwin.[78] Among the earliest subjects of conversation were Wheatstone’s Telegraph—not then in practical use—and my printing machine.... I brought under the consideration of my friends a question which I had long had in mind, as to whether steamships could not use as fuel the hydrogen of the sea-water; but Coode, who was a remarkably well-informed and clear-headed man, succeeded in showing that the heat which would be lost in extracting the hydrogen would be equal to that gained by its combustion. Consequently that what I aimed at was really, though in a disguised form, nothing else than a perpetual motion. So far as my memory serves, this was anterior to the announcement of the doctrine of the correlation of forces.” Shortly after I had lighted on a copy of the scheme of a Social Community, I called on Sir Rowland Hill. The following is my note of the conversation that passed:—