Queenwood Saturday
My Dear Francis.
I send you Riess’s paper,2 Thomson’s note and a title for the former. I quite chime in with your suggestion of tacking my last paragraph as an addenda to Thomson’s note; 3 it will be quite sufficient. Many thanks for your information regarding the ‘Royal’4 – £20 is an important reduction – I will endeavour to have the matter to deferred a little as it would be inconvenient to me to cash out just at present.
I hope Hunts Physics5 is not a large one, and that it will give me occasion to praise instead of to find fault. Reuben’s remark6 is certainly amusing A man who knows the true nature of a scientific investigation would have never made such a remark – One may expect crudities from such a man but there are a million chances to one against his producing
<the two manuscripts are separated in the Taylor and Francis archive but clearly fit together>
any thing really valuable.
I am engaged at Magnus7 and will have it ready for you at the beginning of next month. I will send you Wartmann’s paper8 about the same time. The following is a copy of a note [rec’d] from Sir John Herschell acknowledging the receipt of my application,9
Sir.
I have received your packet of Testimonials and letters, to which all due attention will be paid as well as to the memoirs which accompany them. At present of course I can only acknowledge their receipt.
I am & – | John FW Herschell
[We] shall soon know the issue of the matter; probably before christmas.
most faithfully dear Francis yours | John Tyndall.
‘Elastic – slightly elastic!’ – There is [some] masonry10 here – There is! after the Red Lion dinner I could understand it but beforehand it is incomprehensible – perhaps they were tacked on afterwards eh?11 –
Could you arrange to send me Faraday’s two volumes of ‘Researches in Electricity’12 at the end of the month? I have still another favour to beg of you – I mentioned to you13 that Poggendorff was14 getting up a volume of biograp<hical> notices of people who have occupied themselves with the exact sciences – Do you know <an>y English work or works which contain such biographies? If such should occur to you I should <be> <mu>ch obliged if you would note [them] down and send the titles to me when you have occasion to [write].
StBPL T&F, Authors’ letters
[22 November 1851]: Many allusions show this letter to be closely related to, and written after, 0567 (15 November). Tyndall saying he expects Magnus and Wartmann to be done by the beginning of the next month rules out a December date and makes Saturday, 29 November unlikely. See also the allusion to Royal Society costs (discussed n. 4 below and letter 0572, n. 2).
Riess’s paper: see letter 0514, n. 4 for original publication. Tyndall abstracted two papers by Riess under his ‘Reports on the Progress of the Physical Sciences’, Phil. Mag., 3:17 (March 1853), pp. 173–85; subtitle ‘On Electric Currents of the First and Higher Orders’. Tyndall had planned to send the paper earlier (letter 0557). We have no explanation for the delay.
Thomson’s note ... my last paragraph … : the letter containing Francis’s suggestion is missing. Thomson’s note was probably a letter which Thomson wrote directly to the Phil. Mag. (not letter 0560 to Tyndall), which Francis then sent to Tyndall after receiving his request in letter 0567, with the proposal that, rather than publish the letter Tyndall had sent him, he publish Thomson’s short letter followed by the one paragraph from Tyndall’s original letter. This arrangement was adopted (see letter 0570).
the ‘Royal’ … deferred a little: Tyndall is here concerned about the costs of being elected FRS, for which Sabine had offered to nominate him (letter 0559). Tyndall had informed Francis of the offer on 9 November (letter 0563). It seems that, in a missing letter or letters, Francis mentioned expense, because (as indicated in letter 0572) concern about cost of membership led Tyndall to write to Sabine.
Hunts Physics: Hunt’s Elementary Physics: an Introduction to the Study of Natural Philosophy (London: Reeve and Benham, 1851) was nearly 500 pp. long. Presumably Francis had asked Tyndall to review it (in a missing letter). In his review, Tyndall was strongly critical of the volume (letter 0588).
Reuben’s remark: Tyndall alludes to Reuben Phillips, who had recently written a paper for publication in the Phil. Mag. (published in the January 1852 number). Phillips’s paper is dated 19 November but Tyndall had commented on a version in letter 0550, 15 October (cited n. 8). Whether the remark was in a version of the paper or in a letter to Francis cannot be determined.
engaged at Magnus: Tyndall was translating and condensing a paper by Magnus (cited letter 0556, n. 10). He sent it to Francis with letter 0581 (see n. 20).
Wartmann’s paper: the translation was eventually published as Élie Wartmann, ‘On the Polarization of Atmospheric Heat’, Phil. Mag., 3:16 (February 1852), pp. 108–11. No extant letter indicates when it was sent to Francis. Original cited in letter 0563, n. 7.
note ...my application: his application for a professorship in Sydney. Tyndall copied letter 0566, from Herschel, for the second time (previously copied in letter 0567) to Francis, making similar minor errors in copying; we can only assume that he had forgotten he had done so.
masonry: perhaps Tyndall alludes to the semi-mystical, ritual practices of freemasonry with which the Red Lions had some parallels.
Elastic … eh?: the Red Lions was a dining club, initiated at the BAAS meeting in 1839, as a protest against the expense and pomposity of the Association’s formal dinners; it had a ‘London pride’ (f. 1844). The meetings became ritualistic and rambunctious: for example, a lion skin for the chairman’s chair and roaring in place of applause (Hannah Gay and John W. Gay, ‘Brothers in Science: Science and Fraternal Culture in Nineteenth-Century Britain,’ History of Science, 35 (1997): 425–53). We cannot identify the meeting attended by Tyndall: he did not attend the London dinner regularly until he lived in London; perhaps he attended during the Ipswich BAAS meeting (but his journal is empty for that period).
send me ... Electricity’: for earlier discussion of these volumes see letters 0536 and 0538 n. 6.. Francis sent them as requested (see letter 0581).
mentioned to you: letter missing.
was: the first part of the postscript is at the bottom of the last page of the letter, however Tyndall ran out of room and from here onwards it is written vertically in the left hand margin of the last page of the letter.
Please cite as “Tyndall0569,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on 10 May 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/tyndall/letters/Tyndall0569