PREFACE. 
AmonGsT the various Systems of Observation undertaken in 1839 by 
the British and other Governments, by the East India Company, and by 
private enterprize, for the advancement of our knowledge of Terrestrial 
Magnetism, none were directed to any point in Scotland; although this 
country, from its extreme north-westerly position in Europe, had been 
regarded by Professor Gauss, the originator of this new movement in 
Science, as one of the most interesting localities for Observation. 
General Sir THomas MAKDOUGALL BRISBANE, President of the Royal 
Society of Edinburgh, undertook to supply, at his own expense, the defi- 
ciency thus occasioned ; and instituted, at his residence of Makerstoun, in 
Roxburghshire, a Magnetical Observatory on a scale similar to that of the 
Public Establishments, and of which a detailed account will be found in 
the Introduction to this volume of the Observations. 
The personal establishment, originally confined to one observer, Mr 
E. RussELL, with occasional assistants, was gradually extended, under the 
superintendance of Mr J. A. Broun, to three permanent observers, who, 
it is believed, have carried on as extensive a course of observation as it is 
possible for that number of individuals to perform, with the additional 
labours of reducing them and superintending the Press. 
Sir THomas BrIsBANE having expressed his wish that the Observa- 
tions at the Makerstoun Observatory should appear in the Transactions 
of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and be distributed along with them to 
the Fellows, both Ordinary and Foreign, the Council of the Royal Society 
willingly acceded to the proposal, and desired to mark their sense of the 
national importance of Sir Tuomas BRIsBANE’s undertaking by contribu- 
ting from the Funds of the Society towards the expense of publication. 
The present volume, forming the Seventeenth of the Society’s Trans- 
actions, is the First of the Makerstoun Observations. 
JAMES D. FORBES, Sec. B.S. Ed. 
