Faraday to William Jerdan   2 March 1837

Royal Institution | 2 March 1837

My dear Sir

Several of the papers in reporting what I said relative to Mr. Crosse's insects at the Royal Institution on the evening of Friday the 17 ultimo1 make me to confirm that gentlemans results by particular experiments of my own[.] Your reporter (if then present) will know that I expressly said we had no opinion to offer as to their origin[.] Can you oblige me by stating this in your Gazette either in your words or mine or in any way that shall remove the idea that I am a witness in the case2[.] I am satisfied the insects exist but doubt very much the mode of their production.

Ever Dear Sir | Very Truly Yours | M. Faraday

1
See Lit.Gaz., 25 February 1837, pp. 126-7, for an account of Faraday's Friday Evening Discourse of 17 February 1837 "on Dr. Marshall Hall's views of the function of the spinal marrow". This report made no mention of Crosse's work in which, it was claimed, he had created insects by the use of electricity. See Stallybrass (1967) and Secord (1989), 350-2. However, Crosse's insects went on display in the library by courtesy of William Clift (1775-1849, DSB, naturalist). RI MS F4E, p.5.
2
This letter was published, with very minor alterations, in Lit.Gaz., 4 March 1837, p. 147.

Bibliography

SECORD, James A. (1989): “Extraordinary experiment: Electricity and the creation of life in Victorian England” in Gooding et al. (1989), 337-83.

STALLYBRASS, Oliver (1967): “How Faraday “Produced Living Animalculae”: Andrew Crosse and the Story of a Myth”, Proc. Roy. Inst., 41: 597-619.

Please cite as “Faraday0977,” in Ɛpsilon: The Michael Faraday Collection accessed on 27 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/faraday/letters/Faraday0977