SKETCH OF ELI AS LOOMIS. 407 



ject of general conversation in the college, and lie participated 

 with ranch interest in the discussions that took place in the Tutors' 

 Club over the views of Prof. Twining and Prof. Olmsted concern- 

 ing the origin of the mysterious bodies. In the organization of 

 the department committees of the Connecticut Academy of Arts 

 and Sciences, in 1834, Mr. Loomis was assigned to that on mathe- 

 matics and natural philosophy. From this time on he devoted 

 himself predominantly to those branches of science in which he 

 became distinguished. 



He began systematic studies of the earth's magnetism during 

 his tutorship in Yale College, setting up the variation compass of 

 the institution in the north window of his room and making 

 hourly observations of it, usually for seventeen hours of a single 

 day, for thirteen months. The results of these observations — the 

 only published American observations, except some made by Prof. 

 Bache during ten days in 1833, that were made before 1834 — were 

 published in Silliman's Journal in 1836. He also undertook the 

 collection of observations of magnetic declination in the United 

 States and the construction of a magnetic chart of the country. 

 This work was published about 1830, and in a revised second edi- 

 tion, with additional observations, two years later. Prof. Bache, 

 comparing Mr. Loomis's results with those obtained by himself 

 sixteen years later under much more favorable circumstances for 

 exact observation and collation, declared that, when proper allow- 

 ance had been made for secular changes, the agreement was re- 

 markable. The first charts contained but few records of dip ; 

 but after removing to Western Reserve College Prof. Loomis un- 

 dertook, with a dipping needle which he had procured in Eu- 

 rope, systematic observations of this feature. They were con- 

 tinued for several years at seventy stations in thirteen States, and 

 the results were published in successive papers in the Transac- 

 tions of the American Philosophical Society. 



Prof. Loomis's interest in astronomy apparently dates from 

 the meteoric shower of 1833. He read a paper on that subject 

 before the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences in October, 

 1834, in which he reviewed the concerted observations made by 

 Brandes and his pupils in Germany in 1823, and deduced from 

 them an argument in favor of the cosmic origin of the shooting 

 stars. In November of the same year he made similar observa- 

 tions at New Haven in concert with Prof. Twining who was sta- 

 tioned near West Point, N. Y., the first observations of the kind 

 undertaken in America. 



With the new five-inch telescope, the largest then in the coun- 

 try, given to Yale College by Mr. Sheldon Clark, Prof. Olmsted 

 and Mr. Loomis obtained the first sight of Halley's comet on its 

 predicted return in 1835, and observed it throughout its course. 



