Observatory | Glasgow | 2. July 1857
My dear Dr Tyndall.
I beg to offer you many and sincerest thanks for your kind note,2 and also for a paragraph in which I think I recognize your hand in the Westminster Review.3 I am aware to the fullness of the extremes of manifold defects in the volume. The only excuse is, who, under our exist[in]g cheap publication plan, would or could have warranted a first edition free from multitudes of errors? You will discern many that you might not have expected, on looking more closely at some of the parts of the Book. I plead in extenuation that it has cost me about £300, and that I wish to correct errors in the next edition which I am glad to say, on that account especially is impending. —Do help me therefore by searching criticism and by your invaluable suggestions. Whatever you may choose to write either as to subjects or persons, shall be held by me in honorable privacy.
As to page 10, I found that a collaborateur4 had not known some of your own very important researches. Some amendment we made in the Appendix—by no means complete. That shall all be set right. Thanks for the paper just received from you.5 I have recently seen it—
Ever faithfully yours | J.P. Nichol
Dr Tyndall.
RI MS JT/1/N/12
RI MS JT/1/TYP/3/922
John Nichol: see letter 1405, n. 1.
your kind note: letter missing.
your hand in the Westminster Review: referring to a short review of Nichol’s A Cyclopædia of the Physical Sciences (London: Richard Griffin and Company, 1857) in Westminster Review 68:133 (1857), pp. 276–7. Tyndall and Thomas Huxley oversaw the science section of this journal since 1853.
a collaborateur: not identified.
paper just received from you: possibly J. Tyndall and T. H. Huxley, ‘On the Structure and Motion of Glaciers’, Phil. Trans., 147 (1857), pp. 327–46.
Please cite as “Tyndall1410,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on