Dear Tyndall
Many thanks for the Enclosed.2 What an intelligent note it is; as to ‘regeler’ how true it is that there is nothing new under the sun! You fairly put me to the blush by quoting me for so very small an affair as a name:3 you are indeed delicately honest. I must confess to feeling a pride in standing in any position however humble, to a series of investigations which I venture to consider brilliant, & can quite afford to blow the bellows for such an organ.
I cannot Envy you any discussion with the geologists on the subject, if they are as obtuse in appreciating Physical as they are Biological Evidence. Darwin is the only one of them I know who has any accurate conception of the right or wrong of a Botanical problem; though Lyell has a fair grasp of the philosophy of a question in Nat. Hist., too.
I met a man4 the other night who spent weeks with Agassiz & Forbes in the Aar Glacier,5 he was charmed with your investigations & confirmed all I have said of Forbes’ conduct to Agassiz. I think you have convinced Babbage, Grove & Darwin. Oddly enough Ball haggles at the lamination only!6
I grieve to think of your melancholy errand7—do come to Kew8 next Sunday, —a sight of the children will do you good; & you may find some solace in sweet innocent faces—what better does this world afford to temper our afflictions—Tis not this their best function?
Ever dear Tyndall Y[ou]rs | JD Hooker.
RI MS JT/1/H/504
[January 1857]: the year and month are given by reference to Tyndall mentioning Hooker in a lecture (see n. 2 and n. 3). The day is possibly 26–7 January, as Tyndall returned to London on Monday 26 January after having attended the funeral of Alice Wright on 25 January (see letter 1322, n. 3). Per Hooker’s invitation in this letter, Tyndall spent Sunday 1 February 1857 at Kew (Journal, JT/2/13c/918).
Enclosed: likely a manuscript of Tyndall’s Friday evening lecture at the RI on 23 January 1857 which was published as J. Tyndall, ‘Observations on Glaciers’, Roy. Inst. Proc., 2 (1854–8) pp. 320–7.
quoting me for so very small an affair as a name: Tyndall credited Hooker with suggesting the term regelation to describe the freezing together of thawing pieces of ice upon contact (see letter 1306, n. 10 and letter 1312). Though not mentioned in the abstract of the lecture (see n. 2), an account in the Saturday Review of 31 January 1857 stated: ‘This phenomenon the lecturer attributed, not to viscosity, but to the property which was announced by Dr. Faraday in 1850, and which Dr. Hooker has named “regelation”’. See ‘Dr. Tyndall’s Theory of Glaciers’, Saturday Review, 3 (1857), pp. 102–3, on p. 102. Tyndall noted in his journal on 6 February 1857: ‘In the Saturday Review of last Saturday is an article on my Friday evening—The writer is a well informed man a friend to and well up in Forbes: nevertheless he admits the formidable nature of some of the objections; towards the conclusion he reasons very philosophically: Hooker remarked that the conclusion of the article cannot have been written by the man who wrote the commencement’ (Journal, JT/2/13c/918).
a man: John Moore Heath (1808–82), a fellow of and mathematical tutor at Trinity College, Cambridge. He was a climbing companion of Forbes. See A. D. D. Craik, Mr Hopkins’ Men: Cambridge Reform and British Mathematics in the 19th Century (London: Springer-Verlag, 2008), p. 122.
Aar Glacier: see letter 1305, n. 2.
Ball: John Ball disagreed with Tyndall on lamination, perhaps in an unidentified letter, but later in ‘Observations upon the structure of glaciers’, Phil. Mag., 14 (1857), pp. 481–505.
your melancholy errand: probably a reference to Tyndall’s attending the funeral of Alice Maud Wright (1855–7), daughter of Richard and Fanny Wright, on 26 January 1857. See letter 1324, n. 3.
Kew: a London district where the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew are located. Hooker served as the garden’s Assistant Director from 1855 and followed his father William Jackson Hooker as Director from 1865–85.
Please cite as “Tyndall1328,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on