Faraday to Charles Giles Bridle Daubeny   2 February 18481

Royal Institution | 2 Feby 1847 [sic]

My dear Daubeny

I have delayed answering your letter from day to day for I could not resist the pleasure of plunging into your book2 first. You have indeed added greatly to it3 and I have been luxuriating in the part which reminded me of what I had seen in Italy[.]

You are so courteous and as I think so philosophic in your method of stating the chemical theory that even those who differ from you cannot find fault. I do not feel justified in forming any conclusion for I never could hold in my memory the facts of geology or rather that class of facts & observations which in their nature are analogous to them of Geology & which by some strange condition of my mind seem to require an enormous amount of memory but my natural predilection is towards that which smells of the laboratory. How far will the generalizations of Tilghman4 affect the subject. He seems to shew an extraordinary power of water vapour to decompose a very large class of salts at high temperatures & includes felspar among them. I have just received his paper which is very short5. Perhaps you have not seen it with this note [sic] and you can let me have it back again when you give your evening or at any other time.

I quite rejoice to find you are going to favour us with a discourse6[.] We shall be very strong this season in University power7 & it is a very great satisfaction to myself to think that such men as you & those we are having think well of us at the R.I. and join us in working there[.]

Ever My dear Daubeny | Yours faithfully | M. Faraday

1
This letter is black-edged. See note 10, letter 2046.
2
Daubeny (1848).
3
From Daubeny (1826).
4
Richard Albert Tilghman (1824-1899, DAB). American chemist.
5
Tilghman (1847).
6
See Athenaeum, 8 April 1848, p.370 for an account of Daubeny's Friday Evening Discourse of 24 March 1848 "On some Applications of Chemistry to Geological Research".
7
These included Whewell and Powell.

Bibliography

DAUBENY, Charles Giles Bridle (1826): A Description of Active and Extinct Volcanoes; with remarks on their origin, their chemical phaenomena, and the character of their products, as determined by the condition of the earth during the period of their formation, London.

DAUBENY, Charles Giles Bridle (1848): A Description of Active and Extinct Volcanos, of Earthquakes, and of Thermal Springs; with remarks on the causes of these phaenomena, the character of their respective products, and their influence on the past and present condition of the Globe, 2nd edition, London.

TILGHMAN, Richard Albert (1847): “On the decomposing power of Water at high temperatures”, Trans. Am. Phil. Soc., 10: 173-6.

Please cite as “Faraday2049,” in Ɛpsilon: The Michael Faraday Collection accessed on 27 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/faraday/letters/Faraday2049