Sunday April 4th/69
My dear Father
If you could make it convenient, I should be much obliged if you would bring me my “Stone’s Justice of the Peace Manual”. <1> I am not sure of the exact wording of the title. It is I believe on the table in the library. <2> If it is difficult to find, never mind it.
I went not long ago to the Polytechnic <3> to see a very big induction coil on Rhumkorff’s [sic] principle, <4> made by Apps of the Strand.<5> They show some very fine experiments with it. –
I wrote you a letter yesterday. – Yesterday I was in the Museum of practical geology <6> in Jermyn St and found a specimen named Pholas Constricta, which appears to be exactly the same as a fossil that I found in a heap of road material in Corsham road.<7> – I do not know what quarry it came from but it struck me as a very odd looking thing. – I saw that the object was imbedded in fossilized wood – It must therefore be a boring animal, but it does not look like a shell at all.
Your affect son
Charles
[envelope:]
H Fox Talbot Esq
Lacock Abbey
Chippenham
Notes:
1. Samuel Stone (1804 – 1874), The justices' manual, or, Guide to the ordinary duties of a justice of the peace (London: Shaw and Sons, 1865)
2. Lacock Abbey
3. The Royal Polytechnic Institute, which opened on Regent St, London, in 1838.
4. Heinrich Daniel Rühmkorff (1803 – 1877), inventor of a thermoelectric battery in 1844, and in 1851, the Rühmkorff coil, a simple electrical transformer which made possible many future electrical developments. He is also known for his many philanthropic and scientific benefactions.
5. Alfred Apps, 433, The Strand, London.
6. London, opened in 1851.
7. Leads into Lacock.