My dear Sir,

I return the accompanying without delay, but the books have not yet come to hand.¹ I managed to reach Westerham on the same day that I left you, slept there, and proceeded to Seven Oaks next morning, where I visted Knowle House & Park, & then back to town in the evening. I am very glad to learn that our visit did not overmuch fatigue you.²

I was in the coffee-room of a hotel last evening, & there I met a man of particularly intellectual appearance, & I soon found him to be a man of very superior attainments—a Swede by birth (quite Anglicized), and artist by profession. In the languages of Europe a thorough polyglot, & well versed in Anglo-Saxon, Russian, old Norse or Icelandic, with much to say about old Snorre Sturleson & the composition of the Edda, in the 12^th Century of our era.³ Well, our talk was various, & he mentioned a curious fact which is quite new to me, though it may not be so to you; & if new to him I should like to have your wrangler son’s explanation of it.⁴ If you pour a liquid (water) in a thin stream from the mouth of a jug or otherwise, that column of water invariably twists spirally from right to left! Why is this? I hear that there was some discussion on the subject, & several theories broached, in the old Gentleman’s Magazine of 1818 or thereabouts, & again some ten years before; so I must hunt up M^r. Sylvanus Urban.⁵ I do not remember seeing it anywhere treated of.

Yours very truly, | E Blyth