My dear Francis
I should feel greatly indebted to you if on receiving this you would send a boy to the Royal Society with the enclosed note2 for Mr Weld,3 to be opened by Mr White4 if he is absent. It is to borrow Mackenzies travels in Iceland,5 and when you receive it I should feel doubly indebted to you if you would send it to me by post or rail on the same day. I want to have it by Wednesday as I go to London on Thursday6 and my object is to leave the book with a person [here] who is going to copy some of the drawing for me.
I think the paper of Senarmont Annales de Chim. [3] XXXIII. 3917 would form a very suitable subject for the Scientific Memoirs.8 If you would get it translated I should be [happy] to go halves on the expense.
ever yours | J Tyndall
RDS 27/28
[17–21] March 1853: this letter had to have been written after 6 March, as the recommendation to read Mackenzie was made by Bunsen in a letter dated 6 March (see n. 5). Additionally, Tyndall lectured in London on Wednesday, 16 March (see letter 0731, n. 2), so the Thursday he was travelling to London was definitely not 17 March. As it is unlikely that he received Bunsen’s letter before 9 March and he was in London on 16 March, he must have written this after he returned to Queenwood from his lecture.
enclosed note: not identified.
Mr Weld: Charles Richard Weld (1813–69), assistant secretary of the Royal Society.
Mr White: Walter White (1811–93), who spent forty years working in the library of the Royal Society from 1844 until he retired in 1884.
Mackenzie’s travels in Iceland: see letter 0728, n. 17.
Thursday: Tyndall was in London on Thursday, 24 March (Journal, 24 March, JT/2/13b/603).
Senarmont … 391: M. H. de Senarmont, ‘Researches upon the Optical Characters of Double Refraction in Isomorphous Substancs’, in Tyndall and Francis (eds.), Scientif. Mem., pp. 257–93. The paper was initially published as ‘Recheres sur les propeiétés optiques biréfrignetes des corps isomorphes’, Annal. Chim. et Phys. 33 (1851), pp. 391–437.
Scientific Memoirs: see n. 7.
Please cite as “Tyndall0734,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on