King’s College | 2 August
My dear Sir,
The wide designation (Natural Science)1 of the subjects in which you examine is a source of some little embarrassment to us. Some very few Candidates have I believe applied to be examined in Geology and a very few in Botany and other subjects. I think you have the names of those Candidates. It has occurred to me that it would stop some cavilling and would not perhaps be very troublesome to you to get from some friends three or four questions2 in each of these subjects and to get 10 or 20 copies of them printed or lithographed; so that they might be put (in addition to the other questions) before the Candidates of whom I speak. The answers (if any are given) we might get looked over by competent persons; and any expense which might be incurred in printing the papers or otherwise the Ordnance will pay.
I have made this suggestion with great deference and with a feeling that I have no right to make you responsible for any other portion of the examination than that in your own subjects; but with a feeling also that you will appreciate the difficulty of the circumstances under which this examination is conducted and that you will therefore accept my apologies for the trouble I am giving you.
Yours truly | H. Moseley.
RI MS JT/1/3/894
LT Typescript Only
The wide designation (Natural Science): On 3 August Tyndall recorded in his Journal: ‘A letter from Mr Moseley asking me to prepare a few questions on all the subjects mentioned by the candidates and which have been all mashed together under the head of “natural science”. I should say there is nearly a dozen such subjects including Entomology, Zoology, Meteorology, geology, botany, &c &c. The natural sciences are in a sad mess in England. People appear to have no clear idea of what the region of physics is. They mix it up with chemistry, and in the present instance every thing else is mixed up with them – and for all these sciences thus taken en masse we have the same figure as for a single one of the classical languages! The absurdity makes a man a partisan’ (RI MS JT/2/13c/780).
some friends three or four questions: The examination included sections on both geology and botany (see letter 1111, n. 1), but it is not clear whether the questions on these topics were set by Tyndall.
Please cite as “Tyndall1122,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on