ON MAGNETICAL AND METEOROLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS. 9 
The Board of Ordnance has given orders that copies of all the observations 
at the Ordnance observatories shall henceforward be sent to the governors of 
all our colonies, to be by them deposited in the most accessible public li- 
braries for colonial reference. They have been hitherto, and will in future 
continue to be presented to the directors of all foreign magnetic and meteoro- 
logical observatories officially instituted, and to eminent persons in those 
sciences. 
Approaching conclusion of the present system of magnetic and meteorological 
establishments, and considerations thereby rendered necessary. 
The second term of three years for which the British Government and the 
East India Company have granted the existing establishments will conclude 
with the expiration of the current year; and as the termination of the British 
system of observation will in all probability carry along with it the cessation of 
many or most of the other European series of observations, it has been an 
anxious subject of deliberation with your Committee what course to recom- 
mend to the Association under such circumstances. On the one hand there 
is the serious responsibility of advising the continuance of very heavy expense, 
both to the Government and the East India Company, and of a vast devotion 
of time and labour of eminent individuals in science, and of energetic and 
devoted observers. On the other, the high importance of the objects in view, 
the interest which they yearly continue to excite more and more in the pub- 
_ lie mind, and the perception that the great problems they propose to resolve 
Sa ee a 
4 
are of a nature to yield only to continued and persevering inquiry. Under 
these considerations it was resolved at the last meeting of the Association to 
request a conference of the most eminent foreign magnetists and meteorolo- 
gists on the subject, viz. Messrs. Gauss, Weber, Humboldt, Dove, Erman, 
Hansteen, Plana, Plantamour, Kamtz, Gillis, Bache, Loomis, Kupffer, Arago, 
Quetelet, Kreil, Lamont, Boguslawski and Baron Senftenberg, to be held at 
this meeting, and invitations were issued accordingly, the gratifying effect 
of which has been to procure a prospect of the personal attendance at their 
deliberations, of Messrs. Kupffer, Kreil, Dove, Erman, and Baron Senften- 
berg. 
4 addition to this, an extensive correspondence has been entered into on 
the part of your Committee for the purpose of learning the sentiments both of 
them, and of such other high authorities in the practical and theoretical de- 
partments of these subjects, on the important matter under deliberation. 
This correspondence will be found attached as an appendix to the present 
report, and it has afforded your Committee the means of presenting to the 
conference for discussion the principal features of the subject in a more 
methodical order than would probably have been the case without some pre- 
liminary communication of the kind. A careful and minute analysis of the 
several letters received has enabled them to classify the various and valuable 
suggestions contained in them, and to arrange under distinct heads the ques- 
tions which will have to be decided on in case the general opinion should 
prove favourable to the longer continuance of the system. 
It has therefore appeared to your Committee advisable to propose for con- 
‘sideration at the approaching conference, the following heads of inquiry, 
without prejudice to such other points relative to the general question as the 
experience and judgement of any of their distinguished coadjutors may suggest 
for discussion. % 
I. Under all the circumstances, is it the opinion of the conference that the 
combined system of magnetic and meteorological observation ought to be 
continued longer? 
