Dear Sir
May the gods grant you patience with me for I am a very troublesome fellow. I want you to make an alteration or two in the memoir on magnetism2 for me. They are trifling but still I think worth writing about. In an early part of the memoir the method of experimenting is described, it is said in one place – ‘I sat myself before3 the magnet, weighted the balance &c’ dont you think that word ‘sat’ looks ill or sounds ill? if you do, pray be good enough to strike it out and set ‘I took up my place before the magnet’ or some such expression in its place. I have no copy of the memoir beside me and therefore cannot refer to pages. Under the head of proposition 3 §.3 and immediately before the introduction of the tables the law is expressed in italics. it is there said ‘when a constant force opposed to the magnet applied to the latter to hold this force in equilibrium &c’ it would be better instead of the last <1 word missing> expression to say ‘to hold the ball in equilibrium &c’.4
Again immediately after the introduction of the table proving experimentally the law of Lenz and Jacobi5 – I believe it is the last table in the memoir, a few considerations as to the general error of physicists are introduced. at one place the following words occur ‘I hardly think that Lenz and Jacobi meant to assume so much &c’ – this private opinion of mine you will perhaps be good enough to expunge and introduce in place of the above and what comes immediately after the following words. – 6
The Editor of | The Philosophical Magazine | Red Lion Court | Fleet Street | London7
StBPL T&F, Authors’ letters
[14–15 February 1851]: The Marburg postmark is 15 February1851; the letter may have been written the previous evening but, given the importance of the subject matter to Tyndall, he would not have delayed posting it.
alteration in ... memoir: this is the second alteration requested (see letter 0467, n. 8). For the memoir see letter 0464, n. 2.
sat myself before: there is a heavy tick above ‘before’, apparently made by Francis to indicate he had made the correction. The amended phrase appears at p. 269.
equilibrium &c’: another heavy tick here, indicating that Francis made this correction (p. 275).
law of Lenz and Jacobi: see letter 0465, n. 4.
expunge and introduce … the following words: the offending passage was removed. The proposed insertion began ‘Lenz and J’ but Tyndall crossed that out and the remainder of the letter has not been found.
The Editor … London: address from envelope.
Please cite as “Tyndall0468,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on 28 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/tyndall/letters/Tyndall0468