Trin: Coll: Dub:1 | 6 December 1856.
My dear Sir,
I send you with this note an account of my experiments on Irish Granites—Part of the first portion on the Leinster granites2 was published in the Phil. Mag.3 —I wish to direct your attention to the curious transformation of ordinary granite into Anorthite and Hornblende syenite in Carlingford,4 by the junction with limestone. I would send an abstract of the second part of my paper,5 viz on the Granites of the North East of Ireland—only I am prohibited by the rules of the Geol. Soc. London.6
The change in the order of the Artillery Examination, will, in my opinion, have the effect of stopping the study of Geology and Mineralogy by the Candidates altogether.
Our Dublin Candidates are now reading Moral Sciences instead of Natural,7 as they know well that they will ‘pay better’ at the Examination.
The Natural Sciences should be joined with the Experimental, like Greek and Latin, Mathematics and Mechanics, & both together only counted against the Candidate as one subject.
I am, | Yours very sincerely | Saml. Haughton
RI MS JT/1/TYP/2/483
LT Typescript Only
Trin: Coll: Dub:: Trinity College, Dublin.
first portion on the Leinster granites: S. Haughton, ‘On the Granites of Leinster’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 6 (1855), pp. 230–40.
published in the Phil. Mag.: S. Haughton, ‘Notes on Minerology I. – No. 1. On the Chemical Composition and Optical Properties of the Mica of the Dublin, Wicklow, and Carlow Granites’, Phil. Mag., 9 (1855), pp. 272–5.
Carlingford: a coastal town in northern Ireland.
second part of my paper: S. Haughton, ‘Experimental researches on the granites of Ireland. Part II. On the granites of the North-east of Ireland’, Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, 14 (1858), pp. 300–5.
Geol. Soc. London: Geological Society of London.
Moral Sciences instead of Natural: possibly a reference to the East India Company’s civil service examinations (begun in 1855) which included, among other subjects, English composition, English literature and history, mathematics and Sanscrit. Natural science and moral science were weighted equally in the exams. See ‘The Civil Service Examinations and the Study of History’, Gentleman’s Magazine, 44 (1855), pp. 595–600. For Houghton’s work training students for such examinations see N. D. McMillan, ‘Samuel Haughton, 1821–1897’, in M. McCartney and A. Whitaker (eds), Physicists of Ireland: Passion and Precision (Philadelphia: Institute of Physics Publishing, 2003), pp. 106–15, on p. 107–8.
Please cite as “Tyndall1307,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on