lvi REPORT—1852. 
deputation to confer with the Master-General of the Ordnance, and a similar 
resolution was passed about the saime time by the President and Council of 
the Royal Society. On communicating with the Master-General, it appeared 
that the want of special funds for the requisite calculations formed the only 
obstacle, a difficulty which was happily immediately surmounted by an appli- 
cation of the President and Council ef the Royal Society to Lord John 
Russell, then First Lord of the Treasury. The Report of the Council of the 
British Association to the General Committee at the Meeting of the last year at 
Ipswich, contained an official statement from the Inspector-General of Forti- 
fications of the progress of the reduction and examination of the observations 
preparatory to the desired publication, and concluded with expressing the 
expectation of the Director of the Survey, that he “should be able to furnish 
for communication to the British Association that would probably assemble 
in 1852, the principal results obtainable from the geodetic. operations in 
Great Britain and Ireland.” By a recent letter to my predecessor from 
Captain Yolland of the Royal Engineers, who is entrusted with the direction 
of the publication, I am enabled to have the pleasure of announcing that the 
“ printing of the observations made with the Zenith Sector, for the determi- 
nation of the latitudes of stations between the years 1842 and 1850, is 
finished, and will be presented in time for the meeting of the British Asso- 
ciation, and that the calculations connected with the triangulation are 
rapidly advancing towards their completion.” 
In the meantime the great are of Eastern Europe has been advancing 
with unexampled rapidity and to an extent hitherto unparalleled. Originating 
in topographical surveys in Esthonia and Livonia, and commenced in 1816, 
the operations, both geodesical and astronomical, have been completed be- 
tween Izmail on the Danube and Fugleness in Finnmarken, an extent of 252 
meridional degrees. Next to this in extent is the Indian are of 21° 21! be- 
tween Cape Comorin and Kaliana; and the third is the French are already 
referred to of 12°22’. It appears by a note presented to the Imperial 
Academy of Sciences at St. Petersburgh by M. Struve, that a provisional 
calculation has been made of a large part of the great are of Eastern Europe, 
and that it has been found to indicate for the figure of the earth a greater 
compression than that derived by Bessel in 1837 and 1841, from all the ares 
then at his command,—Bessel’s compression having also been greater than La- 
place’s previous deduction. It is naturally with great pleasure that I perceive 
that the figure of the earth derived by means of the measurement of ares of 
the meridian approximates more and more nearly, as the ares are extended 
in dimension, to the compression which I published in 1825 as the result of 
a series of Pendulum Experiments, which, by the means placed by Govern- 
ment at my disposal, I was enabled to make from the equator to within ten 
degrees of the pole, thus giving to that method its greatest practicable ex- 
tension. 
The observations hitherto made on the ¢ides of the ocean have been insuf- 
4 

