REPORTS 



ON 



THE STATE OF SCIENCE. 



Report of the Committee, consisting of Sir J. Herschel, the 

 Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, the Dean op Ely, 

 Dr. Lloyd, and Colonel Sabine, appointed to conduct the co- 

 operation of the British Association in the system of Simulta- 

 neous Magnetical and Meteorological Observations. 



I OUR Committee have great pleasure in being enabled to continue their 

 hitherto favourable report of the progress of the important operations which 

 they have been delegated to watch over ; and the extent of their operations 

 being now vastly increased, by the addition of new foreign establishments 

 observing upon the same concerted plan, and at the same hours, — by the adop- 

 tion of a system of colonial and national magnetic Surveys, based upon and 

 correlative Avith the fundamental determinationsatthe fixed magnetic centres, — 

 and by the introduction of new instruments and processes of observation , afford- 

 . ing great facilities for magnetic determinations to travellers both by land and 

 sea, — it will be convenient, both for clearness and precision, if we subdivide this 

 our report into several distinct sections, according to the subject matter of 

 these and other heads. And as offering grounds of the warmest interest and 

 most lively sympathy to a British audience, we shall commence with the 



1. Antarctic Expedition 



Our last year's report brought down the account of the progress of the ex- 

 pedition to its departure from Hobart Town in November 1840. The pub- 

 lished extracts from the dispatch of Captain Ross, dated April 7, 1841, con- 

 taining the details of the brilliant success of the expedition in penetrating the 

 formidable barrier of ice, which had baffled the efforts of the French and 

 American navigators, (an achievement as daring as any which has illustrated 

 the annals of British nautical prowess,) and of his discovery of the great vol- 

 canic and lofty continent of Victoria in the previously unexplored seas far to 

 the southward of that bai'rier, must be too fresh in your recollection to need 

 any recapitulation in this report. It is with the magnetic observations and 

 results of the voyage only, that our immediate concern lies. 



Landing on the Auckland Islands shortly after leaving Hobart Town, Cap- 

 tain Ross observed there the November term of 1840. Abandoning then, by 

 reason of the ill success of his predecessors in that direction, his original in- 

 tention of sailing across the isodynamic oval surrounding the point of maxi- 

 mum intensity, his adopted course led him between the two southern foci. 

 And although his return to the northward was by a more westerly route, it 

 seems probable that he was generally to the eastward of the present locality of 

 the greatest intensity. The magnetic observations accumulated in this voyage, 

 however, have only lately reached England. Their full import therefore can- 



1842. b 



