Sunday | 4th, Nov 1860.
My dear Heinrich
I received both your letters1 and was very thankful to you for them. They were and will be of very great use to me. Indeed the simple addition of the pumice stone and caustic potash to the apparatus, caused the nitrogen formed from the nitrite of potash to descend to the level of ordinary nitrogen, but what can it be that produced the effect? Caustic potash would have no influence on nitrous oxide and I do not think nitric oxide could have been present for there was not the slightest trace of red fumes. The passage of the gas through pumice stone & sulphuric acid seemed to have no influence on the result.
I am still at work every day,—I get to the Institution as early as I can & work while I have light. The subject requires the greatest care and delicacy, and for more than six weeks I did little else than find out the conditions of accurate experiment. I have now reached an almost miraculous command over my apparatus, and shall devote the remainder of the time at my disposal this year to the determination of quantitative results. When you see these I think they will excite your surprise.
Of course one cannot work at a subject of the kind without being led into speculation—I think I see molecular qualities, and relations between the molecules of ordinary matter & the surrounding ether more clearly than ever they have been apprehended before. But while I give free reign to my imagination in these matters,2 I drag her sternly down at last to the touchstone of experiment.
I shall be very grateful for any suggestions which you may be kind enough to make to me. I am much in want of some volatile liquids, as I am now engaged on the subject of vapours—have you any that you could give me? A thimble full of each would be sufficient for my purpose.
I hope you will visit us in London this year oftener than you used to do. Hector3 is still here, and often speaks of you. The more I see of him the more I am struck by his remarkable powers: it is a thousand pities that such a man has been tied down to a vocation with which he has no sympathy, and which is unable to develop the extraordinary faculties which he possesses.
I have been lately not a little interested in looking into the life of an old fellow named William Tyndale4 who quitted Northumberland in the times of the wars of the Roses and settled in Gloucestershire. He translated the bible, wrote against the Church of Rome; had to run for his life from place to place, and finally was caught, strangled and burnt near Brussels. When a boy this man’s example was often set before me, and it was affirmed that I belonged to his stock. I always regarded the thing as a myth. Still the tradition is a very old one. But it interests and amuses me to see the striking similarity between the temper of this old reformer and those of Hector & myself. Curious also it is to notice the tendency towards theological discussion in us. I now know all about the Romish controversy so well that I should not fear to hold my ground against Cardinal Wiseman5 himself. I owe this knowledge to my father, he to his father & so on. It certainly is curious and amusing.
But I am boring you. When you come to town I must show you my methods of experimenting. Goodbye dear Heinrich.
Always yours, | John Tyndall
RI MS JT/1/T/260
RI MS JT/1/TYP/7/2367
both your letters: letters 1732 and 1734.
give free reign to my imagination in these matters: Tyndall’s belief in the power of creative scientific ‘imagination’ to give explanations for observed phenomena is best captured in his ‘Scientific Use of the Imagination’, delivered before the British Association at Liverpool, 16th September 1870. J. Tyndall, Essays on the Use and Limit of the Imagination in Science (London: Longmans, 1870).
Hector: Hector Tyndale.
William Tyndale: see letters 1737 and 1740.
Cardinal Wiseman: Nicholas Patrick Stephen Wiseman (1802–65), created first Catholic Archbishop of Westminster in 1850 by Pope Pius IX.
Please cite as “Tyndall1738,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on