Faraday to Robert Fitzroy   23 January 1864

23. January / 64

My dear friend

I have to thank you very heartily for your kind & liberal treatment of Matteucci1: it indeed surprises me for I become so weary & lazy that I feel as if I could not act so freely & graciously:- but I know that he will be very thankful.

Your questions are both deep and high: and the way in which both Poisson2 & Lubbock3 meet them shews how free mens imaginations may be when the judgment or the facts upon which it must stand fails. I cannot imagine a limited or a sudden boundary4[.]

Wherever there is wave undulation there must be wave translation but whilst language but whilst language [sic] is so vague in its application as sometimes to mean by wave the motion of the special particles over which the wave passes & at other times the motion (successive) of the different particles which the wave reaches in succession:- at one time a to & fro motion; at another a right & left motion: & at a third time a motion compounded of the two: we may in loose general talking or writing easily make mistakes[.]

I am getting on very well | Ever My dear friend | Truly Yours | M. Faraday

Adml. R. Fitzroy | &c &c &c

1
See letter 4421 and Fitzroy to Matteucci, 22 January 1864, Parliamentary Papers, 1864 [3334] LV, p.33, responding to Matteucci’s request for information on weather prediction.
2
Siméon-Denis Poisson (1781–1840, DSB). French mathematical physicist.
3
John William Lubbock (1803–1865, ODNB). Banker, astronomer and Treasurer of the Royal Society, 1830–1835 and again 1838–1845.
4
This referred to the hypothesis supported by Poisson and Lubbock that the earth’s atmosphere was surrounded by frozen air. For Fitzroy’s unfavourable view of this see Parliamentary Papers, 1864 [3334] LV, p.23.

Please cite as “Faraday4428,” in Ɛpsilon: The Michael Faraday Collection accessed on 10 May 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/faraday/letters/Faraday4428