OF ARTS AND SCIENCES : MAY 27, 1862. 21 



made, was so difficult, and even dangerous, tliat, according to the state- 

 ment of Sir John Leslie, " Biot, though a man of activity, and not de- 

 ficient in personal courage, was so much overpowered by the alarms of 

 their descent, as to lose for the time the entire possession of himself." 



At the commencement of 1806, Biot, accompanied by Arago, who 

 was then only twenty years old, left Paris to resume the measurement 

 of a degree of the meridian in Spain, which had been interrupted by 

 the death of Mechain. Arago, in his autobiography, has given a de- 

 tailed account of the labors and dangers of this scientific enterprise, all 

 of which, however, were successfully surmounted. To connect by tri- 

 angulation the station at Deserto de las Palmas with Campvey, in the 

 island of Ivi9a, required intense signals, capable of being seen nearly 

 one hundred miles. Long and anxiously they awaited a favorable 

 opportunity, encamped on inhospitable mountains, with no society but 

 the winds and the eagles. 



In the summer of 1817, Biot was despatched to the Orkney and the 

 Shetland Islands, to correct some disputed astronomical observations ; 

 and thus at both extremes he was instrumental in fixing that ideal 

 meridian line which the finger of geometry has drawn from Uust, in 

 the North Sea, to Formentera, in the Mediterranean, — the sure foun- 

 dation of the French metre and the decimal system which the Revo- 

 lution introduced into science. Biot returned to Paris by the way of 

 the Greenwich Observatory, and there, in presence of Arago and Hum- 

 boldt, he experimented on the vibrations of the pendulum, Humboldt 

 being willing, as Biot expressed it, to lay aside for the moment the mul- 

 titude of his other talents, for the sake of being only a good observer. 



Durino- his two months' residence in the Shetland Islands, Biot lost 

 no opportunity of observing the aurora, and studying for himself the 

 problematic phenomena associated with it. And wherever he trav- 

 elled, he was not unmindful of the climate, or the manners and customs 

 of the people nurtured under it. His good sense and calm philosophy 

 are often forcibly impressed on his writings. The Itahans pity the 

 French, because doomed to live under a cold sky ; the French are con- 

 tented, but pity the English ; the English are contented, but pity the 

 Scotch ; the Scotch are contented, but pity the Shetlanders ; the Shet- 

 landers are contented, but they, too, pity the Icelanders, for the inhos- 

 pitable chmate of their Northern home. " La verite est que dans tons 

 les climats du monde, I'homme peut vivre avec une somme de bon 

 heur a peu pres egale, s'il porte avec lui les vertus sociales et les 

 resources du commerce et de la civilization." 



