13th Feb. 1859
My dear Sir
It is with mixed feelings of regret and doubt that I commence this letter—regret that I should have left your last letter1 to me so long unanswered, and doubt as to whether you will accept either my reasons for doing so, or my tardily expressed repentance.
I received your letter in the midst of the mountains of Switzerland when every day was more or less filled with excitement. I lost it there, and hence had it not before me on my return to remind me of my duty—Add to this that my health has been often so delicate as to take away from me sometimes the power of writing to my friends, and you have the chief reasons why this letter has been deferred until this time.
I hope however that your beautiful researches have not been neglected by the Philosophical Magazine, but that they have had in England the publicity which is so justly due to them.
Mr. Gassiot still continues to look at the subject. Mr. Grove gave a lecture2 upon it sometime ago at the Royal Institution, in which he advanced a new, but to me not very clear, nor yet satisfactory theory of the stratifications. He supposes them to be due to the conflict of opposing currents, and assumes the excitement and play of tertiary and other currents in the circuit which produces the phenomena of the striae. By interposing a break in the circuit he supposes that he can cut off the feebler of the two currents which produce the effect—and such a gap destroyed the stratification in an experiment which he made before our members. As I have stated already neither his experiments nor his reasonings are to me clear or conclusive.
Mr. Faraday continues very well—he has lately collected all his minor and earlier researches into a single volume3 which has been published by Taylor & Francis. I ought, perhaps, to say Francis only, for old Mr. Taylor4 died some weeks ago.
I am still at work upon the glaciers, but hope to finish them this year—I had no idea when I commenced the enquiry that it would occupy me so long—I have now I think reduced their principal phenomena to their physical causes.
Need I say that it will give me pleasure to hear from you whenever you are at leisure to write to me?
Believe me dear Sir | very sincerely yours | John Tyndall
NRCC Plücker, item #70 (Box 2/6)
your last letter: letter missing; as Tyndall mentioned, he lost it while in Switzerland the previous summer.
a lecture: on 28 January 1859, Grove presented at the RI ‘On the Electrical Discharge, and it Stratified Appearance in Rarefied Media’. For an abstract, see Roy. Inst. Proc., 2 (1858–62), pp. 5–10.
a single volume: M. Faraday, Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics (London: Taylor and Francis, 1859).
Mr. Taylor: Richard Taylor (1781–1858), a prominent English publisher, especially of scientific journals (including the Phil. Mag.). He went into partnership with his son William Francis following a nervous breakdown in 1852, establishing the Taylor & Francis publishing firm. Taylor died on 1 December 1858 (ODNB).
Please cite as “Tyndall1589,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on