VIII 
JOHN TYNDALL 
THE recent death of Professor Tyndall has removed 
from us a man of preéminent scientific and literary 
power, an early advocate and expositor of the doctrine 
of evolution, and one of the most genial and interest- 
ing personalities that could anywhere be found. It 
seems to me that this meeting of a club devoted to 
the study of evolution is a fitting occasion for a few 
words respecting Tyndall in these different capacities, — 
as a scientific inquirer, as an evolutionist, and as a man. 
Tyndall was born in August, 1820, and was there- 
fore four months younger than his friend, Herbert 
Spencer, whose seventy-fourth birthday will come on 
the twenty-seventh of next month. Tyndall’s strong 
interest in science, like Spencer’s, was manifested in 
boyhood, and there were some curious points of like- 
ness between the early careers of the two. Neither 
went to college or studied according to the ordinary 
routine, and both received marked intellectual stimu- 
lus from their fathers. As Spencer was engaged in 
civil engineering from the age of seventeen to that of 
one-and-twenty, during which time he took part in 
building the London and Birmingham Railroad, so 
Tyndall from nineteen to twenty-four was employed 
in the ordnance survey, and then for three years 
worked at civil engineering. Both went a good way 
in the study of mathematics, but the differences in 
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