Reasons for not seeking to be F.R.S. (as opposed to F.R.S.E.). Arranged for James Matthews Duncan, who had once been passed over, to be admittted by telling them that he could not presume to seek admission to a Society for which Duncan was judged unfit. 'So with numerous offers of LL.D. I made up my mind to have no degree except from Cambridge. 'Gunson [William Mandell Gunson], unknown to me, but with his usual energy, proposed me there: - but he had Okes [Richard Okes, Provost of King's (1850-88)], Cartmell [James Cartmell, Master of Christ's 1849-81] and Co. to deal with and it didn't come off.
The Queen's University [Belfast] D.Sc. was INFLICTED without my permission asked; I never found out how it came to be known to Oliver & Boyd [Edinburgh publishers], &c, &c,....
Account of the insertion in Blackwood's Magazine of 'Notes of the President's Address' [at the British Association meeting of 1874] by Tait and Maxwell [printed in Campbell and Garnett's Life of Maxwell, pp. 639-41. John Blackwood 'chuckled over my lines called Tar(and Feather)nation; and said he would at once have asked me to allow them to appear in 'Maga' had he not been sure that they would destroy its (very profitable) circulation in America!'