MY
DEAR SIR—Professor Kelland, to whom
your paper as
referred by the Council R. S., reports favourably
upon
it, but complains of the great obscurity of several parts, owing to the
abrupt transitions and want of distinction between what is
assumed and what is proved in various passages, which he has marked in
pencil, and which I trust that you will use your
utmost
effort to make plain and intelligible. It is perfectly evident that it
must be useless to publish a paper for the use of
scientific
readers generally, the steps of which cannot, in many places,
be
followed by so expert an algebraist as Prof. Kelland;—if, indeed, they
be steps at all and not assumptions of theorems from other
writers who are not quoted. You will please to pay particular attention
to clear up these passages, and return the MS. by
post
to Professor Kelland, West Cottage, Wardie, Edinburgh, so that he
may
receive it by Saturday the 11th, as I shall then have left
town.—Believe
me, yours sincerely,
JAMES D. FORBES.
