Pisa 3d August 1855
My dear Mr Tyndall
I am much obliged by your having thought of me with regard to your Bakerian Lecture1 and I have written immediately to Masson2 begging him to forward it without delay by post, for I believe that the expense of postage from France to Italy for printed papers is not so very great. I hope that you have received the Nuovo Cimento3 & that you will continue to do so pretty regularly. It would be of great importance to us to receive the Phil. Mag. which you are good enough to send us en courant. I have still another request to make with regard to the exchange of our publications. Through the medium of Prof. Grove I received regularly for two or three months the Proceedings of the R. Society & those of the R. Institution – these for the last three or four months have been discontinued and I should esteem it as a particular favour if you would have the goodness to ask the Secretary4 to continue to send me these papers as before by post – These publications are very interesting to us for the compilation of our journal5 and you will easily conceive also that I am desirous to see Mr du Bois Reymond’s lectures.6 As a means of expediting any more voluminous publication extrapost7 I send you the address of my Brother in law Mr R. Young8 3 Furnival’s Inn. London. – who might occasionally have an opportunity of forwarding a small parcel to Paris or directly to Italy.
Believe me my dear Sir | Sincerely yours | C Matteucci
RI MS JT/1/M/57
your Bakerian Lecture: see letter 1029, n. 1.
Masson: The Paris publisher Victor Masson specialised in scientific and medical books.
the Nuovo Cimento: Carlo Matteucci and Raffaele Piria founded the scientific journal Il Nuovo Cimento in 1855. At their meeting on 2 April 1855, the managers of the RI had agreed to purchase Il Nuovo Cimento for its library.
the Secretary: John Barlow was the secretary of the RI.
our journal: Il Nuovo Cimento.
Mr du Bois Reymond’s lectures: see letter 1066, n. 4. The two men were bitter rivals as du Bois-Reymond had severely criticised Matteucci’s contributions to the field of electrophysiology.
extrapost: Extrapost ‘implies that a person has a private carriage with post horses [harnessed] to it’ (H. Bertold, A Comparative Dictionary, of the German and English Languages (London: printed for W. Joy), p. 54). Those using such carriages, which were surplus to the regular postal service, were required to obtain a permit.
Mr R. Young: Robert Young, an engraver, whose sister, Robinia Elizabeth (1811–97) had married Matteucci in 1846.
Please cite as “Tyndall1123,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on