XXXVil 
bution of the magnetic force, and has indicated, in the clearest manner, 
what still remained for observation to perform; and the beautiful 
theory of M. Gauss, which has been partly built upon the data af- 
forded by the same memoir,—while it has assigned the most probable 
configuration of the magnetic lines of declination, inclination, and 
intensity,—has done the same service with respect to all the three 
elements. 
In another point of view, also, delay has proved of great value to 
both branches of the undertaking, but more especially to the fixed ob- 
servatories. Our means of instrumental research have, since the time 
of their first projection, received great improvements, as well in their 
adequacy to the objects of inquiry, as in their precision; and finally, 
the two great lines of inquiry—the research of the distribution of Ter- 
restrial Magnetism on the earth’s surface,—and the investigation of 
its variations, secular, periodic, and irregular,—have been permitted 
to proceed pari passu. 
Last of all, the prudent caution, and vigilant care, which the two 
great scientific bodies, the Royal Society and the British Association, 
have exhibited, both in the origin and progress of the undertaking, 
have naturally inspired the Government with confidence ; and while on 
the one hand science has not hesitated to demand of the country all 
that was requisite to give completeness to a great design, so on the 
other, the Government of the country has not hesitated to yield, with 
a liberal and unsparing hand, every request the importance of which 
was so well guaranteed. 
But while we thus enumerate the benefits which have resulted to 
magnetical science from the delay, it must be also acknowledged that 
something has been lost also, not to science, but to British glory. Al- 
though terrestrial magnetism stood forward as the prominent object 
of the Antarctic expedition, yet it was also destined to advance our 
knowledge of the “ physique du globe,’ in all its branches, and especially 
in that of geography. Had the project of an Antarctic expedition 
been acceded to when it was first proposed, viz. at the meeting of the 
British Association, in Dublin, in 1835, there can be no reasonable 
doubt, that a discovery of coast, which by its extent may almost be de- 
signated as that of a Southern Continent, situated in the very region to 
which its efforts were to have been chiefly directed, must have fallen to 
its lot ; and the flag of England been once more the first to wave over 
an unknown land. But while, as Britons, we mourn over the loss of 
a prize which it well became Britain and British seamen to have made 
their own, it is our part too as Britons, as well as men of science, to 
hail the great discovery—one of the very few great geographical dis- 
