4th Mar.
My dear Francis.
I intended to send you a note2 but I really forget whether I did or not. I wanted to ask you to be kind enough to send me the younger Mr Brooke’s3 address – I want to send him two or three bits of magnetic substance which I promised he should have when I saw him last. I should also be obliged if you would purchase Herschel on Sound4 for me – It is one of the reprints of the Encyclopedia Metropolitana5 – price 5/- Have you ever seen Schleidner’s plant?6 I should like much to look into it or to purchase it if it is not too dear. I shall call upon you on the 16th and hope to see you in the evening at Finsbury Circus.7
ever yours | John Tyndall
RDS 27/6
4 March [1853]: the references to Tyndall’s upcoming lecture at the LI (see n. 7) as well as to ‘Schleidner’s plant’ (see n. 6) suggest that this letter was written in March 1853.
a note: possibly in reference to letter 0723. Note that he did not ask for the address in that letter.
younger Mr Brooke’s: Refers to Charles Brooke, FRS, (1804–79), son of Henry James Brooke (1771–1857), a well-known mineralogist. The younger Brooke was a surgeon and an inventor who wrote on mathematical and experimental physics.
Herschel on Sound: Herschel’s treatise on Sound was initially published as part of the Encyclopaedia Metropolitana in 1830 and reprinted in 1845 (J. F. W. Herschel, ‘Sound’, in E. Smedley [ed.], Encyclopaedia Metropolitana; or, Universal Dictionary of Knowledge, on an Original Plan Comprising the Twofold Advantages of A Philosophical and an Alphabetical Arrangement, with Appropriate Engravings. Second Dvision. Mixed Sciences., vol. 2 [London: Baldwin and Cradock, 1830], pp. 747–820).
Encyclopedia Metropolitana: initially edited by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and published in 1817–45, the Encyclopædia Metropolitana was thirty volumes in length and contained fifty-nine parts that discussed the arts and sciences.
Schleidner’s plant: misspelling of Schleiden. See letter 0724, n. 2.
Finsbury Circus: the LI. Tyndall was to give a lecture on 16 March at the LI (see 0722, n. 4).
Please cite as “Tyndall0725,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on