744 A MEMOIR OF ELIAS LOOMIS. 



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

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

 his thoughts and study to language rather than to science. 



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

 of Arts and Sciences twelve committees representing the several de- 

 partments of knowledge, and Tutor Loomis was put on the committee 

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

 scientific taste or activity which I have detected earlier than the 

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

 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 

 and consider his work in each subject 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 steeple 

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

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

 tions; it has motions with a daily period; nations with an annual 

 period ; and motions whose oscillations re<iuire centuries for comple- 

 tiou. 



The daily n)otions 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 wiiulow of his room in North College a 

 heavy wooden block, and on it the variation compass that belongs to 

 the college. Here for over thirteen months 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 Science in 1830. 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 j^ublished, except ten 

 days' observations made by Professor Bache in 1832. In fact 1 know 

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

 earlier than these by Tutor Loomis. He also at this time formed the 

 purpose of collecting all the observations of magnetic declination that 

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

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

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

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

 Haven that when he had been a few months professor at Hudson he 

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

 servations thus far obtained, aiul with them a map of the United States, 

 with the Hues of equal deviation of the needle drawn upon it. Two 



