Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 2.djvu/121



Prof. Tyndall has long desired to visit the United States, to see his many friends, and to observe the aspects of American life; while multitudes in this country have reciprocated the desire, that they might have the opportunity of listening to his lectures. Yielding to their numerous appeals, he has prepared a course of six lectures, and brought with him a large amount of new and delicate apparatus, for illustrating them. The lectures will embrace the phenomena and laws of light: reflection, refraction, analysis, synthesis, the doctrine of colors, and the extension of radiant action in both directions, beyond the light-giving rays into the region of invisible action. Then will follow the principles of spectrum analysis, the polarization of light, the phenomena of crystallization, the action of crystals upon light, the chromatic phenomena of polarized light, and the parallel phenomena of light and radiant heat. These lectures will be a source of rare intellectual enjoyment to those who will have the good fortune to listen to them, and of which our citizens will not be slow to avail themselves.

We give, in the present number of the, the best likeness we have ever seen of Prof. Tyndall. He is a man of medium stature, lithe-built, highly vitalized, alert and noiseless in his movements; a ready and effective talker, but an excellent listener, and his manners are genial and attractive. He is socially strong, a man of the world, as well as a philosopher, and at home in all relations. But, with all his passion for experiment, he has not yet made the experiment of matrimony.