 In his essay Merryweather also noted other features of the design, including the fact that the leeches were placed in glass bottles placed in a circle to prevent them from feeling "the affliction of solitary confinement".Merryweather spent all of 1850 testing the device, sending a letter to the president of the Philosophical Society and the Whitby Institute, Henry Belcher, to warn him of an impending storm.The results of 28 of these predictions are kept in the library of Whitby Museum.