I have just heard from Wild, the director of all the Russian observatories, that he is anxious to adopt the plan over all the Russias, and wants an automatic arrangement. So I am going in for it and hope to get a machine made before long. It is really too important to be delayed. You deserve great credit for your labours, and by rights the paper should be _yours alone_, but perhaps we [had] better keep together. We can do the automatic affair also together if you like. The automatic arrangement alluded to has already been mentioned. It was not proceeded with. CHAPTER VIII ROSCOE AND CHEMICAL LITERATURE Roscoe’s services to chemistry are to be measured as much by his contributions to its educational literature as by his efforts to enlarge its boundaries by original inquiry. For there can be no question that his various text-books, ranging from the most elementary “first-steps” and primers, through different grades to the most comprehensive of treatises, have proved of the greatest service to the teacher, and have exercised a profound influence in the diffusion of chemical knowledge in this country and abroad. His “Lessons in Elementary Chemistry,” one of the earliest of Macmillan’s series of class text-books, was first published in 1866, the fair copy for the press being written out with characteristic neatness by his wife. Its appearance so soon after the remarkable report of the Duke of Devonshire’s Commission which had awakened widespread attention to the almost universal neglect of all science teaching in our public schools was most timely. The book went through edition after edition, and despite the competition of dozens of similar works is still a favourite class-book. At the suggestion of his friend Lothar Meyer it was translated into German by Schorlemmer, and published by Vieweg & Son, and has been largely used in German schools and colleges. Translations have also appeared in Russian, Italian, Hungarian, Polish, Swedish, in modern Greek, Japanese, and in one of the Indian vernaculars, Urdu. Concerning this last translation, Roscoe used to tell an amusing story. The Urdu work was lithographed, not printed, the page being nearly twice the size of that of the English original, which was a small octavo. The illustrations were also proportionately magnified, including that showing the length of a decimetre and its sub-divisions of centimetres and millimetres! Still more successful, as regards its sale, was his “Chemistry Primer,” published in 1870, and intended to serve as the first step in chemistry in schools. It also was widely translated, editions having appeared in Icelandic, Polish, German, Italian, Japanese, Bengali, Turkish, Malayalam, and Tamil. He also published two text-books on “Inorganic Chemistry,” one for beginners, in conjunction with Dr. Lunt; and a larger one for advanced students, in association with Dr. Harden, each of which has reached a second edition.