Magnetic Observations and Physical Observations: 275

Extracts from Resolutions of the General Committee.

Committees and individuals, to whom grants of money for scientific purposes have been entrusted, are required to present to each following meeting of the Association a Report of the progress which has been made; with a statement of the sums which have been expended, and the balance which remains disposable on each grant.

Grants of pecuniary aid for scientific purposes from the funds of the Association expire at the ensuing meeting, unless it shall appear by a Report that the recommendations have been acted on, or a continuation of them be ordered by the General Committee.

In each Committee, the member first named is the person entitled to call on the Treasurer, John Taylor, Esq., 6, Queen Street Place, Upper Thames Street, London, for such portion of the sum granted as may from time to time be required.

In grants of money to Committees, the Association does not contemplate the payment of personal expenses to the members.

In all cases where additional grants of money are made for the continuation of Researches at the cost of the Association, the sum named shall be deemed to include, as a part of the amount, the specified balance which may remain unpaid on the former grant for the same object. — Report of 1849, pp. xxii-xxvii.

Nor has the Association been less successful in the applications which they have made to Government and to other public bodies, for pecuniary aid in the accomplishment of objects beyond their own means of execution. So early as 1832, it was resolved to apply to Lord Grey's Government for the means of reducing the observations of Bradley, Maskelyne, and Pond, on the sun, moon, and planets, from the year 1750 to the present day. The request was immediately complied with, and £500 advanced by the Treasury.

One of the most important objects which has been pursued by the Association, is the encouragement they have given to magnetic observations, and the establishment of physical observatories. The origin and history of this branch of scientific research have not been recorded, so far as we can find, in any of the Reports or Proceedings of the Association. In the year 1823, when the celebrated Professor Oersted of Copenhagen projected a tour through England, Professor Hansteen of Christiania, in Norway, requested him to make a series of observations on the intensity of the magnetic force in this country; and he entrusted to him a magnetic needle, which had been used in various parts of the Continent, where the time had been ascertained, in which it performed 300 horizontal oscillations." When Professor Oersted was in Edinburgh on the 23d July 1823, he and Sir David Brewster made a series of observations with it in a field behind Coates Crescent, and nearly at the intersection of Walker Street and Melville Street. These observations were then the most westerly of any that had been previously made. In order to determine the intensity of the magnetic force throughout Scotland, Sir David Brewster, who was then General Secretary to the Royal Society of Edinburgh, ordered for that body Professor Hansteen's apparatus. When this instrument arrived from Christiania, where it was constructed by Professor Hansteen himself, and furnished with his own needle, which he had pre

*

Edinburgh Encyclopædia, Art, VARIATION of the Needle, vol. xviii. p. 711,

viously compared with his standard one, in June 1827, Sir David put the apparatus into the hands of Mr. James Dunlop, (with the letter of instructions which he had received from the Professor,) who had agreed to make observations with it throughout Scotland. Mr. Dunlop accordingly travelled along our east and west coasts in June, July, and August 1829, and made that admirable series of magnetical observations which was communicated to the Royal Society in 1830.*

In 1832, when the vast importance of magnetical and meteorological observations had been recognised throughout Europe, Sir David Brewster, who had pointed out† the remarkable connexion between the curvature of the magnetic lines and that of Humboldt's isothermal lines, was very desirous of having Physi cal Observatories established in Great Britain and her colonies, in which magnetical and meteorological observations should be conducted. Baron Humboldt had, during his grand tour through Russia in 1829, induced the Emperor to establish a series of magnetic observations in different parts of Asia, an example which was followed by other European sovereigns, and even by the Chinese Government, so that it was no unreasonable proposal that the Government of a great maritime nation should do what almost all others had done. With these views, Sir David Brewster wrote to Mr. Harcourt, in April 1832, and proposed that the British Association should take steps for the establishment of Physical Observatories. He had previously drawn up a plan for such institutions, and submitted it to an individual of high rank and great influence with the Government, but the countenance of a scientific body was required to give effect to any private application. In a letter dated May 4, 1832, Mr. Harcourt says

"With respect to a Physical Observatory, I do not know what Humboldt's plans have been, except so far as regards his copper houses for magnetical experiments; but it is easy to conceive a national establishment for observations and experiments of a certain order which would be in the highest degree desirable, and to which the only impediment which forbids us to hope that it can soon be realized, is the state of the national finances. Should these improve, as I trust they will, and should the Government assign a few thousands a-year to the support of such an establishment, I do not think that much objection would be raised even by a reformed parliament, or by the country, jealous, and often ignorantly jealous, as it now is, of the public expenditure. At such a moment I conceive that our Association might exert itself to promote this object with the greatest effect. Let a committee of the best

*

p. 52.

Edinburgh Transactions, vol. xii., Part i., p. 1. See also First Report, 1831, + Edinburgh Transactions, 1820, vol. ix. p. 223.

Great Objects Accomplished—Greater Neglected.

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men be appointed to draw up a report on the manner in which science is affected by the laws and taxes, and on the manner in which it might be promoted by public encouragement-a sound and eloquent politicoscientific report;-let this report be adopted by the following meeting of the Association, and embodied in a petition to the Legislature, with the signatures of all our eminent men of science, and with the support of all its patrons. This would have weight, much greater weight than anything that an individual in office or out of office can say or do, -much greater weight also than the application of any scientific council."

These excellent views were not adopted either at Oxford or Cambridge, and the subject of physical or magnetic observations, though referred to in 1834, was not effectually taken up. Another and a higher impulse was given to it by Humboldt himself. In 1836 this distinguished philosopher, ever ready to labour for science, addressed a letter to the Duke of Sussex, as President of the Royal Society, urging the establishment of regular magnetic observatories in the British dependencies. The Royal Society obtained a grant of money from the Government, but nothing effectual was done till the Association took up the subject in 1838 at their meeting in Newcastle, and prosecuted it with zeal and success. In that year they not only recommended the erection of magnetic observatories, but appointed a conference of the most distinguished philosophers in Europe to be held in Cambridge in 1845, in order to establish a system of simultaneous observations in various parts of the world. These services to physical science were still farther increased by the establishment of electrical, magnetical, and meteorological observations in the Kew Observatory, which her Majesty had placed at the disposal of the British Association for the purposes of scientific inquiry.

The meeting at Newcastle took the still more important step of recommending to the Government an expedition into the Antarctic regions to determine the place of the southern pole, and to advance other branches of science. Lord Melbourne's Government listened to the application, and the expedition was entrusted to Captain J. C. Ross, a member of the Association.

In the year 1843 the Association applied to Sir Robert Peel's Government for the means of publishing the Catalogue of Stars in Lalande's Histoire Céleste, and also Lacaille's Catalogue of Stars in the Southern Hemisphere, and £1000 was liberally placed at their disposal for this purpose: and they are now applying to the present Government for the means of erecting in a southern climate a large reflecting telescope, to make observations which cannot be so well carried on in our own.

* See this Journal, vol. viii. p. 177.