XXXIV REPORT—1845. 
keeping up an unbroken series of observation :—but with this difference, that 
whereas the chief data of Astronomy might be supplied by the establishment 
of a very few well-worked observatories properly dispersed in the two hemi- 
spheres—the gigantic problems of meteorology, magnetism, and oceanic 
movements can only be resolved by a far more extensive geographical dis- 
tribution of observing stations, and by a steady, persevering, systematic attack, 
to which every civilized nation, as it has a direct interest in the result, ought 
to feel bound to contribute its contingent. 
I trust that the time is not far distant when such will be the case, and when 
no nation calling itself civilized will deem its institutions complete without 
the establishment of a permanent physical observatory, with at least so much 
provision for astronomical and magnetic observation as shall suffice to make 
it a local centre of reference for geographical determinations and trigono- 
metrical and magnetic surveys—which latter, if we are ever to attain to a 
theory of the secular changes of the earth’s magnetism, will have to be re- 
peated at intervals of twenty or thirty years for a long while to come. Ra- 
pidly progressive as our colonies are, and emulous of the civilization of the 
mother country, it seems not too much to hope from them, that they should 
take upon themselves, each according to its means, the establishment and 
maintenance of such institutions both for their own advantage and improve- 
ment, and as their contributions to the science of the world. A noble ex- 
ample has been set them in this respect, within a very few months, by our 
colony of British Guiana, in which a society recently constituted, in the best 
spirit of British co-operation, has established and endowed an observatory of 
this very description, furnishing it partly from their own resources and partly 
by the aid of government, with astronomical, magnetic, and meteorological 
instruments, and engaging a competent observer at a handsome salary to work 
the establishment—an example which deserves to be followed wherever British 
enterprise has struck root and flourished. 
The perfectly unbroken and normal registry of all the meteorological and 
magnetic elements—and of tidal fluctuations where the locality admits— 
would form the staple business of every such observatory, and, according to 
its means of observation, periodical phenomena of every description would 
claim attention, for which the list supplied by M. Quetelet, which extends 
not merely to the phases of inanimate life, but to their effects on the animal 
and vegetable creation, will leave us at no loss beyond the difficulty of selec- 
tion. The division of phenomena which magnetic observation has suggested 
into periodical, secular, and occasional, will apply mutatis mutandis to every 
department. Under the head of occasional phenomena, storms, magnetic 
disturbances, auroras, extraordinary tides, earthquake movements, meteors, 
&ce., would supply an ample field of observation; while among the secular 
changes, indications of the varying level of land and sea would necessitate the 
establishment of permanent marks, and the reference to them of the actual 
mean sea level which would emerge from a series of tidal observations, carried 
round a complete period of the moon’s nodes with a certainty capable of de- 
tecting the smallest changes. 
The abridgement of the merely mechanical work of such observatories by 
self-registering apparatus, is a subject which cannot be too strongly insisted 
on. Neither has the invention of instruments for superseding the necessity 
of much arithmetical calculation by the direct registry of éotal effects. re- 
ceived anything like the attention it deserves. Considering the perfection to 
which mechanism has arrived in all its departments, these contrivances pro- 
mise to become of immense utility. The more the merely mechanical part 
of the observer’s duty can be alleviated, the more will he be enabled to apply 
himself to the theory of his subject, and to perform what I conceive ought to 
