May 28, I860.] ADMIRALTY SURVEYS— NEW CHARTS. 157 



Compass Department of the Admiralty. This officer has since 

 followed up the work by collecting the deviation tables of all iron 

 ships in Her Majesty's service and the Great Eastern, whence he has 

 been enabled to arrive very nearly at the laws which govern these 

 anomalies in our compass-cards, and has prepared a valuable paper 

 on the subject, which it is understood will soon appear in the 

 Philosophical Transactions. Your late President in the same paragraph 

 of his Address went on to urge the necessity of great caution in 

 marking accurately on our charts the existing variation, and making 

 allowance in shaping a course for its rapid change in some localities, 

 pointing out that an error of a quarter of a point of the compass in 

 a run of 500 miles would amount to 25 miles. Surely his words 

 must have been prophetic ! A few months had hardly elapsed 

 before the iron screw steamer Indian, by neglecting this very caution 

 in the short distance of 300 miles from Cape Eace towards Cape 

 Sable, ran upon the reefs upon the coast of Nova Scotia, at a spot 

 full 40 miles out of her proper course, and became a total wreck. 

 Let me again then mrge on all engaged in the preparation of charts 

 that they look most carefully to the variation of the compass and to 

 its rapid change in certain localities. 



Besides the surveys above enumerated as in progress in different 

 parts of the world, the labours of the Hydrographic Office during 

 the past year have consisted in the publication, under the imme- 

 diate superintendence of Mr. Michael AValker, Chief Draughtsman, 

 of about 80 new and corrected charts of various coasts and plans of 

 harbours, some of which have been already mentioned. The 

 number of Admiralty charts printed has been 148,000, of which 

 120,000 have been sold to the public. In addition to these have 

 been published the usual annual lists of the 2000 lights spread all 

 over the globe ; Notices to mariners of new lights ; hydrographic 

 notices of new rocks and shoals discovered ; Tide Tables for the 

 British Isles ; the time and height of high water for the principal 

 ports in the world ; and some 200 corrections in Eaper's Tables of 

 Maritime Positions, chiefly in Newfoundland, St. Lawrence, British 

 Columbia, Manchuria, the Eastern Archipelago, and Australia. 



Topographical Department of the War Office. 



Our Associate, Colonel Sir Henry James, r.e., has favoured me 

 with an account of the department under his charge, which I have 

 much pleasure in laying before the Society. It is divided into 



VOL. IV. N" 



