Broomfield | Sheffield | Oct. 30th /55
My dear Sir,
I trust to be able to send you a paper on the cleavage of limestones2 before very long. I have not been at home above a few weeks, and have been otherwise engaged; but now will set to work and write it. I have drawn some illustrations for it on the wood blocks, and shall send them up to London to be cut to-day. I shall perhaps order the engraver to let you have them without first sending them here. If so, where should they be sent? Please tell me.
My paper will be almost entirely confined to the question ‘is slaty cleavage the result of a mechanical crystalline cause?’
I should be much obliged if you will inform me what kind of charts those were that you communicated to the Brit. Ass. from Captain Fitzroy.3 Are they in detached sheets, so that I could purchase them for the seas round Britain? Is there any catalogue of them, that I could get to see? You know perhaps that the branch of geology that I am studying requires me to know a good deal of the actual directions of the winds of the present period.
Trusting to have the pleasure of seeing you when I am next in town.
I remain | Yours very truly | Henry Clifton Sorby.
RI MS JT/1/4/1344
LT Typescript Only
Henry Clifton Sorby: The geologist Henry Clifton Sorby (1826–1908) made extensive use of the microscope and spectrascope to study the structure of rocks and crystals.
a paper on the cleavage of limestones: H. C. Sorby, ‘On Slaty Cleavage, as Exhibited in the Devonian Limestone of Devonshire’, Phil. Mag., 11 (1856), pp. 20–37.
charts … from Captain Fitzroy: The naval commander and meteorologist Robert Fitzroy (1805–65), who had commanded H.M.S. Beagle during Charles Darwin’s voyage, had presented ‘Wind-charts of the Atlantic, Compiled from Maury’s Pilot Charts’ at the 1855 meeting of the BAAS (Brit. Assoc. Rep. 1855, pp. 39–40). This published report makes no mention of Tyndall’s role.
Please cite as “Tyndall1150,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on