John Tyndall to Faraday   c3 August 18511

Aug. 1851.

Dear Sir,

I have to return you my sincere thanks for your kind and valuable letter. I was already aware of your dislike to giving written testimonials and therefore took care not to ask for anything of the kind. Indeed the manner of recommendation which you allude to would be more agreeable to me than that by certificate, and if the parties have an agent in this country (of which I am not yet aware) I doubt not it would be the most practical and effectual.

With regard to my paper at Ipswich2 there is one matter which I should like to call to your mind. During the reading of it I was haunted by the consciousness that the Section was already tired, and this caused me, I doubt not, to appear somewhat hurried. Had it occurred earlier in the day, as I hoped it would I think I should have satisfied you better3.

I believe you will find the experiments to be as I have described them. If you once turn the light of your intellect upon this matter I think you will not long halt between two opinions - that you will once more take the thought to your bosom which suggested that significant note to a passage in the Bakerian Lecture for 1849 “Perhaps these points may find their explanation hereafter on the action of contiguous particles.”4

With best thanks, dear Sir | Most faithfully yours | John Tyndall

Prof. Faraday | etc. etc.

Dated on the basis that this is the reply to letter 2452.
Tyndall (1851b), given at the meeting of the British Association.
See Athenaeum,12 July 1851, p.748 for Faraday’s comments on Tyndall’s paper.
Faraday (1849b), ERE22, note to paragraph 2586.

Bibliography

FARADAY, Michael (1849b): “Experimental Researches in Electricity. - Twenty-second Series (continued). On the crystalline polarity of bismuth and other bodies, and on its relation to the magnetic and electric form of force (continued)”, Phil. Trans., 139: 19-41.

TYNDALL, John (1851b): “On Diamagnetism and Magnecrystallic Action”, Rep. Brit. Ass., 15-18.

Please cite as “Faraday2454,” in Ɛpsilon: The Michael Faraday Collection accessed on 27 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/faraday/letters/Faraday2454