744 A MEMOIR OF ELIAS LOOMIS. 



a globe and discussed before the club the new theories about these 

 bodies. Up to this time Tutor Looniis had seemed to him to have given 

 his thoughts and study to language rather than to S(;icMi(!e. 



In January, 1834, there were constituted in the Connecticut Academy 

 of Arts and Sciences twelve committees rejiresenting the several de- 

 l)artments of knowledge, and Tutor Loomis was i)ut on the committee 

 on mathematics and natural philosoidiy. These are the only signs of 

 scientific taste or activity which 1 have detected earlier than the 

 autumn of 1834, after he had been a year and a term in the tutorshij). 

 From this time on to the end of his life he gave his time and energies 

 to several subjects that are enough distinct one from the other to make 

 it convenient to disregard a strictly chronological account of his labors 

 ancLconsider his work in each subjecjt by itself. 



A subject of which he early undertook the investigation was terres- 

 trial magnetism. We often use the rhetorical phrase "True as the 

 needle to the pole," but looked at carefully, the magnetic needle is any- 

 thing but constant in direction. Like the weather vane on the steejjle 

 it is ever in motion, swinging back and forth, in motions minute and 

 slow it is true, but still always swinging. It has titfuUy irregular mo- 

 tions; it has motions with a daily peiiod ; motions with an annual 

 period ; and motions whose oscillations require centuries for comple- 

 tion. 



The daily motions of the magnetic needle were those which Tutor 

 Loomis first studied. At the beginning of the second year of his tutor- 

 ship he set up by the north window of his room in iforth College a 

 heavy wooden block, and on it the variation con)i)ass that belongs to 

 the college. Here for over thirteen mouths he observed the position 

 of the needle at hourly intervals in the daytime, his observations 

 usually being for seventeen successive hours of each day. 



The results of these observations, together with a special discussion 

 of the extraordinary cases of disturbance, were published in the Amer- 

 ican Journal of iSciencc in 183(). No similar observations of the kind 

 made in this country had at that time been published. So far as I am 

 aware, none made before 1834 have since been published, excei)t ten 

 days' observations made by Professor Bache in 1832. In fact I know 

 of only one or two like series of hourly observations made in Europe 

 earlier than these by Tutor Loomis. lie also at this tinu^ formed the 

 l)urpose of collecting all the observations of magnetic declination that 

 had been hitherto made in the United States and of constructing from 

 tliem a magnetic chart of the country. He appealed successfully to the 

 Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences for its sympathy ami aid. 

 The work of collecting facts was so far advanced before leaving Xew 

 llavcn that when he had been a few months i)rofessor at Hudson he 

 forwarded to the American Journal of ticience a discussion of the ob- 

 servations tlins far obtaineil. and with them a ma]» of (he United States, 

 with the lines of e(]ual deviation ol the needle drawn upon it. Two 



