Broughton | April 17th 1855
My dear John.
You did not tell me in your letter this morning1 whether you were better or worse for your trip.2 You left us in such a precarious state of health that I should like to know. I have packed up 20 cells3 complete and will send them tomorrow. I have only one pair of zincs suitable for poles so that I was obliged to send you others. Send all back as soon as you have done with them. I am sending the translation of Verdet4 to Francis by this post.
Riess’ paper5 is also on the point of being finished. We have had delightful weather since you left us. I was not at all surprised to find you had given Anna your watch,6 the idea suggested itself suddenly to me one day when she was wearing it and you were present. One day indeed I thought of telling her not to wear it as it looked as if she wanted it but I did not for I saw she was perfectly innocent of any such intention and that if she had not been you would not have given her it for that reason. It is a gift she will prize. I will have it repaired and in future I am sure it will be better cared for than it has been. I intend coming to hear Du Bois on Saturday next7 and stopping Sunday with you. I shall be alone.
Yours affectionately | T. A. Hirst
RI MS JT/1/H/215
your letter this morning: letter missing.
your trip: Tyndall visited the Hirsts at Queenwood, arriving on 4 April, when they attended an Easter concert at the school. On 9 April they went to Southampton to see Margaret Ginty and her children off to Rio de Janeiro; see letter 1059. Tyndall returned to London on 12 April ‘with health improved but slightly’ (Hirst’s Journal: RI MS JT/2/32c/1165).
20 cells: a battery consisting of 20 voltaic cells, which Tyndall was borrowing from the laboratory at Queenwood.
the translation of Verdet: Hirst translated the first part of ‘Recherches sur les Propriétés Optiques Développées dans les Corps Transparents par l’Action du Magnétisme’ (Annal. de Chimie, 41 (1854), pp. 370–412) by the French physicist Emile Verdet (1824–66) as ‘On the Optical Properties Developed in Transparent Bodies by the Action of Magnetism’, Phil. Mag., 9 (1855), pp. 481–509.
Riess’ paper: Hirst translated Peter Riess’s paper ‘Ueber die Wirkung nicht-leitender Körper bei der electrischen Influenz’ (Poggend. Annal., 92 (1854), pp. 337–54) as ‘On the Action of Non-Conducting Bodies in Electrical Induction’, Phil. Mag., 9 (1855), pp. 401–13.
given Anna your watch: see letter 1070.
Du Bois on Saturday next: Hirst attended the first of du Bois-Reymond’s lectures on ‘Electro-Physiology’ which was delivered at the RI on Saturday, 21 April.
Please cite as “Tyndall1068,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on