3S4 



YARIA.TION OF THE COMPASS. 



Commerce, as well as to the advancement of a more par- 

 ticular knowledge of the subject. 

 The magncti- It has hitherto been considered, that the variation of 

 univcTsaHy ° " ^^® magnetical needle is not fixed in any particular place, 

 supposed to but is constantly varying, in a greater or a less degree, in 



change in the all parts of the world. I have discovered an exception 

 course of time. . .!• , , ^ . . , 



Exc ption. ^^ *"*^ supposed general property of variation ; and, as 



it may be, perhaps, the first that has been made, it will 



require proportionally strong proof to establish it. This, 



I flatter myself, I am able to effect, to the certainty of 



demonstration itself; but, in doing so, I am under the 



necessity of being more tedious than I could wish, in 



order to describe fully the data, on which the inference is 



founded. 



Lands in Ja- I resided at Jamaica, as a King's Surveyor of Land, 



maica arc held upwards of twenty years. Disputes at law about bound- 

 under grants •<?,,, . , 

 with a diagram ^^^^^ ^f lands are there decided by ejectments, in the 



annexed Supreme Court of Judicature, by the evidence and dia- 



grams of King's Surveyors 6f Land. This is different 

 from the practice in England, because the manner in 

 which grants of land from the Crown are made, in the 

 two countries is different. In Jamaica, to every grant 

 of land a diagram thereof is annexed to the patent. 

 This diagram is delineated from an actual survey of the 

 land to be granted, having a meridional line, according to 

 the magnetical needle, by which the survey was made, 

 laid down in it. No notice is taken of the true meridian. 

 The boundary lines of the land granted are marked on 

 earth, (as it is denominated,^ by cutting notches on the 

 trees between which the line is run through the woods. 

 — . referring to These trees being mostly of hard timber, the notches will 

 permanent ^te discernible for thirty years, or more. By repeated 

 estate, deter- re-surveys these lines are kept up ; and, when the culti- 

 mined at first vation, on both sides, renders it necessary to fell the 

 y compass. ^larked trees, (which can only be done by mutual con- 

 sent, it being otherwise death by the law,) logwood 

 fences are planted in the lines dividing the properties thus 

 e4iUivated ; and many of these fences have been regularly 

 repaired, and kept up, to the present time. Lands were 

 granted from the Crown soon after the Itestoration, in 

 1660; and every succeeding year the number of patents 



increased. 



