Four Autograph Letters Signed and one Typed Letter Signed to G[eorge]. K[enneth]. Menzies, Secretary, Royal Society of Arts.

English scientist (1871-1938), Professor of Chemical Technology at the Imperial College of Science and Technology. All items quarto and very good, though lightly grubby, creased and stained in places. All five docketed and bearing the Society's stamp. LETTER ONE (one page): He will be happy to give 'a course of Cantor lectures [...] on the subject of "Surface Construction" provided that you will put in the requisite gas & air services at your cost for the practical Demonstration'. LETTER TWO (one page, typed): He has decided that 'Coal and its Conservation" is a better title for the Cantor lectures that he is to give the following month than 'Fuel Economy'. He explains why he cannot be present 'when Sir Frank Heath gives his Address on "Government and Scientific Research". LETTER THREE (two pages): He has been 'laid up at home with a chill' and hopes that the outline of the lectures which he is now sending has not arrived too late. 'The economic aspects of the Coal Question are so rapidly changing that it is not easy to decide long beforehand how and on what lines to deal with it in such a course of lectures, and I shd. like to reserve for myself some latitude.' The outline is on the reverse of the leaf, together with directions for printing, the letter proper being crossed through in pencil so that it is not printed. LETTER FOUR (one page): He is enclosing 'the scripts of my 2nd. & 3rd. Cantor Lectures which I trust you will find in order & intelligble for your printers' (not present). 'In view of the settlement of the railway strike, it is probable that I shall have to go away from home on business [...]'. Gives directions regarding proofs. LETTER FIVE (one page): Returns proof of the first lecture 'duly corrected'. Asks that the printers send 'a galley of the corrected sheet, because I am delivering the same Lecture to an audience in Tyneside on the 26th. inst, and it wd. be very convenient to have a corrected "galley" sheet to read from'. All five items signed 'William A. Bone'.