15 Harley St. | Dec. 17th 1864
Divine Phoebus,1
I am desolated in being compelled to deprive myself of the pleasure and profit of accompanying you in your intended circuit2 seeing that I am at present pretty completely tied up. But I do hope when you pervade the Pass of Llanberis3 you will remember me with gratitude as its discoverer. I don’t doubt that is & must be the direction to which your feet will not to say nose will be directed—but if not it ought to be, especially as it will be snowed up.
With the utmost reverence | Your worshipper | G. B.
P.S. It is a shame however to leave the Phil. Club4 in the lurch—what shall I do for my precious 14,5 if you all go away to Wales.
P.S. I hope there will be somebody in my place to take care of you.
P.S. When at Beddgelert6 count the suspicious ones. Six I should say.
P.S. Your best route if Welsh will be the rail to Machynlleth7 and round by Tan y Bulch8 and Beddgellert to Carnarvon9 only tho you will miss the Pass.
RI MS JT/1/B/163
RI MS JT/1/TYP/1/179
Divine Phoebus: Phoebus (Apollo), God of light, philosophy, poetry, and music.
I am desolated… your intended circuit: presumably there is a letter missing, in which Tyndall shared with Busk his plans of going to Wales.
Pass of Llanberis: a mountain pass in Snowdonia, a mountainous region in northwestern Wales. In the event, Tyndall and Huxley went to Derbyshire, not Wales.
Phil. Club: the Philosophical Club of the RS (see letter 2045, n. 3). The next meeting of the club was held just five days after Busk wrote this letter, on 22 December. He presented on the animal and human fossil discoveries from Windmill Cave in Gibraltar by Joseph Frederick Brome (1814–70), a British archeologist and governor of the Military Prison in Gibraltar (T. G. Bonney, Annals of the Philosophical Club of the Royal Society, written from its Minute Book (London, Macmillan & Co., 1919), p. 169; A. Menez, ‘Custodian of the Gibraltar Skill: The History of the Gibraltar Scientific Society’, Earth Sciences History, 37 (2018), pp. 34–62; G. Busk and H. Falconer, ‘On the Fossil Contents of the Genista Cave, Gibraltar’, Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, 21 (1865), pp. 364–70).
my precious 14: reference unclear.
Beddgelert: a village in Snowdonia, Gwynedd, Wales.
Machynlleth: a market town in northwestern Wales.
Tan y Bulch: in Welsh, Tan-y-Bwlch, is a railway station that serviced the Snowdonia region in Gwynedd, Wales.
Carnarvon: in Welsh, Caernarfon, is a small town in northwestern Wales.
Please cite as “Tyndall2194,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on