Faraday to Christian Friedrich Schoenbein   19 November 1850

Royal Institution | 19, Novr. 1850

My dear Schoenbein

I wish I could talk with you instead of being obliged to use pen & paper[.] I have fifty matters to speak about but either they are too trifling for writing or too important for what can one discuss or say in a letter[.] Where is the question & answer & replication that brings out clear notions in a few minutes whilst letters only make them more obscure one cannot speak freely ones notions & yet guard them merely as notions:- but I am fast losing my time & yours too. I received your complimentary kindness & like it the better because I know it to be as real as complimentary[.] Thanks to you my dear friend for all your feelings of good will towards me. The bleachings by light & air are very excellent[.] I see a report of part of your paper in the account of the Swiss association but not of the latter part¹. However a friend has your paper in hand & I hope to have the part about atmospheric electricity soon sent to me. I should be very glad indeed to have from any one and above all from you a satisfactory suggestion on that point. I know of none as yet.

By the bye I have been working with the oxygen of the air also. You remember that three years ago I distinguished it as a Magnetic gas in my paper on the diamagnetism of flame and gases² founded on Bancalari’s³ experiment⁴. Now I find in it the cause of all the annual & diurnal and many of the irregular variations of the terrestrial magnetism. The observations made at Hobarton Toronto Greenwich St Petersburg Washington St Helena the Cape of Good Hope & Singapore all appear to me to accord with & support my hypothesis. I will not pretend to give you an account of it here for it would require some detail & I really am weary of the subject[.] I have sent in three long papers to the Royal Society⁵ & you shall have copies of them in due time & reports probably much sooner in Taylors Magazine⁶[.]

I forwarded your packets immediately upon the receipt of them[.]

But now about Ozone. I was in hopes you would let me have a list of points with reference to where I should find the accounts in either English or French Journals and also a list of about 20 experiments fit for an audience of 500 or 600 persons - telling me what sized bottles to make ozone by phosphorus in - the time & necessary caution &c &c &c. My bad memory would make it a terrible & almost impossible task to search from the beginning & read up, whereas you who keep all you read, or discover with the utmost facility could easily jot me down the real points. If you refer to any such notes in your last letter when you ask me whether I have received a memoir on Ozone & some other things then I have not received any such notes & I cannot indeed I cannot remember about the memoir⁷.

I was expecting some such notes & I still think you mean to send me them and though I may perhaps not give Ozone as an Evening before Easter still do not delay to let me have them because I am slow - & losing much that I read of, have to imbibe a matter two or three times over & if I do ozone ⁸ I should like to do it well.

My dear wife wishes to be remembered to you & I wish most earnestly to be brought to Madame Schoenbein’s mind. Though vaguely I cling to the remembrance of an hour or two out of Bâle at your house⁹ & though I cannot recall the circumstances clearly to my mind I still endeavour again & again to realise the idea[.]

Ever My dear Schoenbein | Most Truly Yours | M. Faraday

Address: Dr. Schoenbein | &c &c &c | University | Basle | on the Rhine