yliy REPORT. — 1851. 



At the last meeting of the Association, a Committee was appointed ex- 

 pressly to urge on the Government, what had long excited the attention of 

 the Association, the defective state of the Survey as regards Scotland. I am 

 happy in stating that there is strong reason to hope that a large sum will in 

 future be appropriated to the Scotch Survey. Whether this be considered 

 as giving to the country the advantages of an accurate territorial map or as 

 aiding in a most peculiar degree in geological inquiries, — in either point of 

 view it is a matter of interest to the Association, and it will be a matter of 

 satisfaction to them that, mainly through their representation, this object has 

 been attained. 



The next subject to which the influence of the Association was ener- 

 getically directed is. Terrestrial Magnetism ; with which Meteorology has 

 usually been associated. Although the active employment of several of the 

 Colonial Magnetic and Meteorological Observatories has terminated (those 

 only of Toronto, Hobartown, Cape of Good Hope, Madras and Bombay 

 being retained, and only in partial activity), the work connected with them 

 has not yet ceased. Much has yet to be done in the printing and discussion 

 of the observations : — a work going on under the care of Col. Sabine. In 

 tacit association with the representative of the Government, the agents of the 

 Association are employed at the Kew Observatory, under the superintend- 

 ence of Mr. Ronalds, in devising or examining new instruments. The Da- 

 guerreotype method of self-registration (which is perhaps liable to this ob- 

 jection, that the original records are destroyed) has been extended to the 

 vertical-force instrument. Apparatus has been arranged for the graduation 

 of original thermometers — a subject to which the attention of M. Regnault 

 and Mr. Sheepshanks had been advantageously directed. And, with the 

 assistance of a portion of the sum placed by the Government at the disposal 

 of the Royal Society (to which I shall hereafter refer), it is hoped by the 

 officers of the Association that the Kew Observatory will be made really 

 efficient for the testing of new instruments. Dr. Robinson's very instructive 

 account of his new anemometer has lately been received : this instrument, 

 however, has not yet been used in many places. Among the immediate de- 

 ductions from magnetic observations, I may specially mention Col. Sabine's 

 remarks on the periodical laws discoverable in disturbances apparently of the 

 most irregular kind, and M. Kamtz's corrections of the Gaussian constants. 

 Among the more distant results, there is nothing comparable to the experi- 

 mental inquiries into the magnetic properties of oxygen, and especially into 

 the variation of its power, made by Messrs. Faraday and Becquerel, — and 

 the application of these results to the explanation of the phsenomena, in 

 almost all their varied forms, of so-called terrestrial magnetism. It is to the 

 former of these philosophers that this great step in the explanation of obscure 



