REPORT OF THE KEW COMMITTEE. XXxXi 
- The Principal and Professors of Owens College. 
VI. The Council has this day received letters of invitation to the Assa- 
ciation to hold its Meeting in 1858 in Leeds, from— 
The Mechanics’ Institution and Literary Society. 
The School of Practical Art. 
VII. The Council have also this day been informed of an invitation to be 
presented from the Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle-on-Tyne 
and the Fine Arts Society of the North of England, to hold an early meeting 
at Newcastle. 
VII. The General Committee will receive full information, in the sub- 
joined Report from the Kew Committee, of the proceedings of that establish- 
ment during the past year; and the Council are persuaded that the General 
Committee will see with pleasure the evidences of the still increasing public 
utility of that institution, and of the credit thereby accruing to the British 
Association. 
Report of the Kew Committee of the British Association for the 
Advancement of Science, for 1856-57. 
Since the last Meeting of the British Association, the works necessary for 
lighting the Observatory with gas have been executed at a cost of £250, 
which has been defrayed by a Grant from the Wollaston Fund by the Pre- 
sident and Council of the Royal Society. 
Soon after the last Meeting of the Association, the Board of Works com- 
menced the external repairs of the Observatory. These were completed in 
November last. The Chairman having represented to the Chief Commis- 
sioner of Works the necessity for considerable repairs to the interior of the 
Building, the Board of Works agreed to execute such repairs as soon as the 
necessary funds should be voted by Parliament. The Committee understand 
that the requisite vote has been passed, and that the works will be proceeded 
with in the course of the present summer. 
The following memorandum relative to the re-establishment of self-re- 
cording magnetic instruments at the Kew Observatory was submitted to the 
Committee by General Sabine on July 22, 1856 :— 
“]. The decennial period in the solar magnetic variations, and its coinci- 
dence with a similar period in the frequency and amount of the solar spots, 
appear to be highly deserving of attention in an observatory established, as 
Kew is, for physical researches. 
“9. There is reason to suppose that the permanency and regularity in the 
occurrence of the decennial period in the magnetic variations, and its coinci- 
dence with the periodic variation of the solar spots, might be effectually and 
satisfactorily tested by observations of both classes of phenomena at the 
alternate periods of maximum and minimum, say for example, in 1857 and 
1858 as the anticipated period of maximum, and in 1863 and 1864 as the 
anticipated period of minimum, and so forthe 
“3. The apparatus constructing under the superintendence of Mr. De la 
Rue will, it is hoped, fully meet the requirements of the research in respect 
to the solar spots. 
“4, Since the time when the magnetic self-recording instruments belong- 
ing to the Kew Observatory were constructed under the direction of Mr. 
Ronalds, very considerable improvements have been made in the art of Pho- 
tography, and the six months’ trial which was made by Mr. Welsh of Mr. 
Ronalds’ instruments, has led in several other respects to suggestions for im- 
provements which could not but be expected to be required in instruments 
