Ɛpsilon

Faraday to Martin Farquhar Tupper1   5 October 1841

Royal Institution | 5 Octr. 1841

Sir

On returning to England2 I found your extraordinary & very acceptable present and most heartily thank you for it. The matter is most astonishing and almost incredible but who shall limit the powers which govern nature and her operations? who shall limit their author? It is for us only to observe[.] I put trust in your statement of precautions taken but it would be worth a great deal and much trouble to repeat the result3[.]

I am Sir | Your obliged & Grateful Servant | M. Faraday

M.F. Tupper Esq | &c &c &c

1
Martin Farquhar Tupper (1810–1889, ODNB). Popular writer.
2
From his visit to the Continent. See Bence Jones (1870a), 2: 127-63 for extracts from Faraday’s diary of this journey.
3
This was a sample of wheat which Tupper claimed to have grown from ancient samples found in an Egyptian mummy. For Faraday’s later interest in this see Tupper to Faraday, 9 June 1842 and Faraday to Tupper, 11 June 1842, letters 1403 and 1405, volume 3. For a discussion of this wheat see Hudson (1949), 80-1.

Bibliography

BENCE JONES, Henry (1870a): The Life and Letters of Faraday, 1st edition, 2 volumes, London.

HUDSON, Derek (1949): Martin Tupper: His Rise and Fall, London.

Please cite as “Faraday1365a,” in Ɛpsilon: The Michael Faraday Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/faraday/letters/Faraday1365a