ON MAGNETICAL AND METEOROLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS. 18 
Would it be advisable to recommend to the General Committee to appoint 
M. Erman to act as a committee to superintend the calculation of the 
Gaussian constants for 1829, with a grant of £50 per annum for two years 
according to his proposal ? 
Would it be advisable to accept M. Dove’s offer to reduce one station’s 
meteorological observations in the mode proposed by him, and to call on 
other members or others who may be disposed to follow his example, and to 
request them to act as a committee with or without money at disposal to do so 
‘on the system to be proposed by M. Dove? 
Is there any one ready to undertake a climatology of England according 
to M. Dove’s suggestion ? 
Professor Bache proposes general hourly observations for a year all over 
America, to commence a year hence [ ? exact day ...], would it be right to 
call upon private observers or public bodies to do the same in Europe, and 
in that case to guarantee their publication ? 
Is there any decided improvement capable of being suggested in the mode 
of publication of the colonial observations? 
Your Commitiee further report, that they have expended out of the grant 
of £50 placed at their disposal the amount of £16 16s. 8d., and request a 
continuance of the grant. 
Signed on the part of the Committee, 
J. F. W. HERSCHEL. 
APPENDIX. 
I. Circular addressed by Sir John Herschel, on the part of the Com- 
mittee appointed to conduct the co-operation of the Britis Asso- 
CIATION in the system of Magnetical and Meteorological Observa- 
tions. 
_ December 5, 1844. 
Sir,—It being understood that the term for which the British Government 
and East India Company have pledged their support of the British magnetic 
and meteorological establishments expires with the year 184.5, so that, unless re- 
newed, the British co-operation in those observations, on its present extensive — 
footing, will cease with the expiration of that year;—and the Committee of 
the British Association for the advancement of Science, appointed to conduct 
the co-operation of the Association in that system of observations, having to 
make, at the next meeting of the Association in June 1845, a general report 
on the progress made and the objects accomplished by the several establish- 
ments in Europe and elsewhere (so far as they shall be in possession of the 
necessary information), in which report this circumstance will necessarily 
be adverted to, they request the favour of your consideration of and reply to 
the following inquiries. 
Ist. Whether in your judgement there are any, and if so, what important 
objects to be accomplished by a continuance of the existing establishments 
for a longer period,—executing as at present both systematic and simultane- 
ous observations, or either class to the exclusion of the other? 
2nd. Do you consider that private research has to any useful and valuable 
degree been stimulated by the example of the government establishments in 
Europe and elsewhere, and that science has thereby received material con- 
tributions which would probably not otherwise have arisen? and can you state 
instances ? 
