Christ Church, July 13th 1864
My dear Sir!
Last mail brought me a copy of your admirable work, Heat considered as a mode of motion,1 which has given me infinite pleasure and for which I am to offer you my best thanks. I have read it with great [profit], [&] it is my intention to give a lecture on it next winter and to try some of your experiments in illustration—
I think that your work was a step in the right direction and that a great deal of practical advantage will also accrue from it in due course of time.—
Two mails ago I sent to Sir Rod. Murchison to be read to the Geol[ogical] Society a paper2 on the causes which have led to the excavation of our Alpine Lakes & with this mail I have sent an appendix.
On the climate of the Pleistocene epoch of New Zealand,3 I am exceedingly anxious to hear your opinion and if on mechanical grounds it can be objected to, I know Murchison & many of the older geologists will fight against it, but nevertheless I am certain, serious objections can not be raised, being based upon observations in the field.
Dr Falconer’s theory4 is ridiculous and I cannot understand how a man like Murchison could adopt it. Of course if it can be proved that the rocky bottom was below freezing point all the time & that no water could sink down through the ice, then I will give up my objection to it
A section across our glacier lakes shows clearly that the water below the glacier on the bottom of the present lake had when the glacier existed to rise nearly 200 feet before it could flow of & thus to rise to such an altitude it had to be forced up by the gravitation of the glacier itself.—
With next mail I shall have the pleasure to send you a paper of mine5 on the formation of the Canterbury plains,6 which will probably interest you as I had to treat of some glacier questions. I think that never before the real power of glaciers has properly been taken into accounts, because I am certain that principally during the latter part of the tertiary period they have played a much greater role than ever has been suspected and that the configuration of many a country can only be satisfactorily explained by admitting their enormous scooping power.—
I suppose you are taking some interest in alpine history, therefore it would perhaps interest you to have a look at my alpine collections in Kew, which our friend Dr Hooker will gladly show you.—
I shall be delighted to hear soon again from you.
Believe me my dear Sir, | ever very sincerely yours | Julius Haast.
Prof. John Tyndall | FRS | London
RI MS JT/1/H/7
Heat considered as a mode of motion: Heat as a Mode of Motion.
a paper: J Haast, ‘“Notes on the Causes which have led to the Excavation of Deep-Lake Basins in Hard Rocks in the Southern Alps of New Zealand’, Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, 21 (1865), pp. 130–2.
On the climate of the Pleistocene epoch of New Zealand: see J. Haast, ‘Note on the Climate of the Pleistocene epoch of New Zealand’, Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, 21 (1865), pp. 135–7 (this was published as an appendix to yet another paper by Haast).
Dr Falconer’s theory: Hugh Falconer (1808–65), an Edinburgh-trained geologist, paleontologist, and naturalist, who had made significant contributions to botany and paleontology, and had been significant in establishing the antiquity of man, which Lyell later made use of in his The Antiquity of Man (1863). Further though, Falconer had considerable stratigraphic skill, and had argued that the Sewalik fossil material he had been working on in India was not of New Red Sandstone age (now called the Triassic) as had previously been supposed, but late Tertiary (it is now known to be predominantly Plio-Pleistocene), and that the deposit was of a similar sedimentary composition as the molasse of Switzerland (ODNB).
paper of mine: J. Haast, Report on the Formation of the Canterbury Plains (Christchurch: New Zealand Geological Survey, 1864).
Canterbury plains: an area south of the city of Christchurch, which has remained a highly debated subject of geological research because of its land and river formation left by glacial movement.
Please cite as “Tyndall2120,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on