Text Online
From:
Michael Faraday
To:
Josiah John Guest
Date:
March 1819
Source of text:
GAS MS D/D G Letterbook 1819<> 369
Summary:
No summary available.
Contributor:
Faraday Project
No summary available.
Writes on occasion of their wedding anniversary: her respect, affection, and happiness in Smith all superior to what they were then. Thanks for good news Smith sent from [Thomas] Platt [(d 1842), one of John Sibthorp's executors, supervised the publication of "Flora Graeca"] . Recommends for Smith's breakfast reading the anecdotes of Mr Emlyn, the "worthy dissenting minister" of Lowestoft, in the "History of Lowestoft"; relates some of them.
[Draft or copy]
Hopes Smith recovered from the indisposition he suffered when he "honoured our town [Liverpool] with [his] instructive visit". Forced to give up botanical part of his Brazilian collections so as to focus on the zoological side, which is his main interest anyway, but anxious that botany should benefit from his collecting in places where no one has been but himself; offers to present any able botanist with collection of his duplicates, on condition of results being presented to Linnean Society; asks Smith to propose it to any of his competent botanical friends.
Smith's candidature for Botany Professorship at Cambridge University. [James Henry] Monk's [(1784-1856) Regius Professor of Greek, Cambridge] attack on Smith in "Quarterly Review". Believes Smith will never carry the professorship or lectureship, due in part to changing circumstances in professorships at Sidney Sussex College. Observes he and Sir Joseph Banks were negligent in supporting James Donn [(1758-1813)] and [Arthur] Biggs [(1765-1848)] for curatorship of Botanic Garden without fully knowing their religious persuasions.
Has dispatched the tourmaline. His chemical experiments. Circulating functions solving chance problems. [Letter postmarked 1819-3-29.]
Happy to draw up a paper of "Plantae Brasilienses"; does not anticipate it being very difficult, having the Linnaean herbarium, all of Rublet's specimens, and Commerson's; impossible for anyone to do such a work without seeing those specimens. However, his next work must "absolutely be a British Flora in English long promised", so cannot undertake Swainson's work at present, and is also pressed by "Flora Graeca". Believes the 'Graminae' would be the most difficult part.
Encloses specimen of handwriting of Linnaeus. Cannot think of any other person, except [Robert] Brown, "who cannot do half he is engaged in", competent enough to do what Swainson wants, "as it ought to be done".
No summary available.
Introducing her son Henri.
Has returned from Paris. Comments on Lady Smith's "practical defense" of Smith's cause in the Cambridge dispute. Is sending part 10 of [Alexander von] Humboldt and [Aimé Bonpland's] "Nova genera". Wants introductions to [Thomas William] Coke for Mr Williams, an American friend, brother of Samuel Williams of Finsbury Square, "the greatest banker from America in Europe", and Mr Paine, a cousin of Williams. Elected FLS.
Has had some more tourmaline sent. Gives some more equations. Chemical experiments.
Criticism of [James Henry] Monk's [(1784-1856), bishop of Gloucester and Bristol and classical scholar] "Hippolytus" [(1811)]; criticism thereof.
Unable to come to dinner on Saturday but hopes to see him in the evening.
Made apparatus for showing rings between 'two Tourmalines.' JH's process for making hyposulfurous acid. Praises W. H. Wollaston's analysis of CB's 'Tonquinate.'
Regarding the disposal of the tourmaline. Address of his cousin. Drawing and description of the apparatus for experiments on tourmaline. Chemical experiments.
Heard from [Aylmer Bourke] Lambert that Smith intends to reply to Professor Monck [it was thought Monck had written a critical piece on Smith regaring the Cambridge botany professorship in the "Quarterly Review"]. Glad that [Dawson] Turner has completed his "Fucus". Thanks for Mrs Turner's "beautiful" etching of Smith. Sir Joseph Banks' recovered considerably; no longer suffering constipation, no attack of gout for fifty days, and gaining strength, it is accredited to Sir Edward Hume's administering of sixty drops of Colchicum autumnale. Goodenough's daughter, Charlotte, in Coldbeck, Cumberland, ill with typhus fever, which is endemic in that town; she has been treated with an emetic, an opening medicine, and a blister. Fears the medical men adminstering too many lowering medicines, as in the south, when after the first evacuants the patient is kept up with port wine and brandy.