SIR EDWARD SABINE. 563 



frequency and magnetic disturbance ; "Wolf not limiting the compari- 

 son to recent observations, though the earlier ones on both classes of 

 phenomena are fragmentary. 



In addition to his official work, Sabine continued his publication of 

 a series of papers, which he began in 1840, under the title of " Con- 

 tributions to a View of the Distribution of Magnetism over the Earth." 

 The fifteenth contribution appeared as late as 1876, when its author 

 was eighty-eight years old. In these contributions Sabine collected, 

 arranged, and discussed an immense fund of observations, made by 

 sea or land, in every latitude and longitude, printed or in manuscript, 

 and drawn from innumerable sources, foreign and domestic, many of 

 them inaccessible to the ordinary student. The observations were 

 illustrated by maps, prepared in the office of the Admiralty, under 

 the direction of Captain Evans of the Royal Navy. The astronomer 

 Halley had attempted, with equal boldness, but with inadequate mate- 

 rials gathered in his own voyages, to make a rough sketch of the 

 features of the earth's magnetism in 1701. 



Allusion has been made in this notice to only the most important 

 of the one hundred and three papers printed by Sabine. His mind 

 and his pen were incessantly at work. Every subject coxmected with 

 the physics of the globe interested and occupied him : the tempera- 

 ture of the depths of the ocean, the direction and force of its currents, 

 and their influence on navigation ; the influence of the Gulf Stream 

 on the coasts of Europe and on the oceanic horizon ; the barometrical 

 measurement of mountains and their efi'ect upon the plumb-line ; the 

 length of degrees of the meridian ; the meteorology of Bombay ; the 

 winter storms of the United States ; and the causes of mild winters. 

 At the same time, he was not unmindful of the improvements going on, 

 at home and abroad, in his own arm of the military service. Not less 

 valuable were his services as the scientific adviser of his wife, the 

 gifted translator of Humboldt's " Cosmos and Aspects of Nature," and 

 of Dove's " Distribution of Heat over the Surface of the Earth." The 

 societies which honored him with their highest offices brou2;ht him 

 labor as well as distinction, and demanded of him the preparation of 

 many addresses. He was the General Secretary of the British Asso- 

 ciation from 1839 to 1858, and its President in 1853. In 1846 he 

 was made Foreign Secretary of the Royal Society, in 1850 Its Vice- 

 President and Treasurer, and its President between 1861 and 1871. 

 The Royal Medal, then recently re-established by Queen Victoria, was 

 awarded to him in 1849 for his contributions to the study of terrestrial 

 magnetism; and the government created him a K. C. B. in 1869 for 



