April 20th 1858.
My dear Tyndall,
At the meeting at Reeks1 where you were not, there was some talk of working up the public in science through the Saturday Review.2 That was before that delicate flower the ‘Scientific Review’3 budded only to fade.
Maskelyne,4 the proposer of this scheme, has now seen the ‘Saturday’s’ Editor,5 and wants half a dozen of us to join together to work out the plan.
Saturday’s Editor offers space and pay for a scientific article, not a review, once a fortnight, such articles to be inserted without alteration or modification. He will also be glad to insert Reviews, if we like to do them. It is suggested that Sylvester, Maskelyne, you, Frankland, myself, Hooker,6 Ramsay and Smyth,7 should form a corps (d’elite!)8 each member of which should pledge himself to supply at least one article in three months. The subject to be at the pleasure of the individual in his own branch of science.
The plan seems to me so feasible that I promised at once to write to you and Hooker. It seems to me to offer the advantages without the trouble and responsibility of our ‘Scientific Review’—and it is not too much of a pull upon one’s time.
Let me know if you agree, because we must have a preliminary meeting to discuss our plan of operations.
Ever yours very faithfully | T. H. Huxley.
IC HP 8:35
Typed Transcript Only
meeting at Reeks: Trenham Reeks (1823–79), registrar at the Government School of Mines and Science Applied to the Arts in London. See ‘Trenham Reeks’, Nature, 20 (1879), pp. 38–9
Saturday Review: The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science, and Art was a weekly London newspaper established in 1855.
‘Scientific Review’: Huxley, Joseph Hooker, and Tyndall had discussed establishing a ‘Scientific Review’ newspaper to communicate science to the public. The idea was abandoned and as this letter indicates efforts would go toward writing science articles for the already established Saturday Review, although Hooker declined. On the ‘Scientific Review’, see R. Barton, ‘“Huxley, Lubbock, and Half a Dozen Others”: Professionals and Gentlemen in the Formation of the X Club, 1851–1864’, Isis, 89 (1998), pp. 410–44, on pp. 428–9.
Maskelyne: Mervyn Herbery Maskelyne (1823–1911), a mineralogist and grandson of Astronomer Royal Nevil Maskelyne (ODNB).
the ‘Saturday’s’ Editor: John Cook, from 1855–68. See letters 1528 and 1574.
Hooker: Joseph Hooker.
Smyth: Warington Smyth (1817–90), an English geologist and professor at the Government School of Mines and Science Applied to the Arts in London, and older brother of Charles Piazzi Smyth (1819–1900), the astronomer royal for Scotland (ODNB).
corps (d’elite!): a select group of people (French).
Please cite as “Tyndall1509,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on