XXX REPORT — 1855. 



Report of the Kew Committee, presented to the Council of the British 

 Association June 27, 1855. 



The Committee beg to submit the following Report of their proceedings 

 since the meeting of the Association at Liverpool. 



On the 20th of October last, Mr. John Phillips addressed a letter to the 

 Chairman of the Kew Committee, announcing that a sum of £500 had been 

 placed by the General Committee at the disposal of the Council for the main- 

 tenance of the establishment at Kew, and that the General Committee had 

 recommended that application should be made by the President to Her 

 Majesty's Government for the use, rent free, of the two acres of land adjacent 

 to the Observatory, and for the laying-on of gas. 



The Committee met on the 8th of November, when the fixed expendi- 

 ture for the year was estimated at £341 (viz. Mr. Welsh £1.50, Beckley £91, 

 Magrath £40, and house expenses £60). 



It having been represented to the Committee that Her Majesty's Govern- 

 ment were anxious that magnetical and meteorological instruments, showing 

 the state to which they had advanced in this country, should be exhibited at 

 the Paris Exhibition, and that the expenses which might be incurred on any 

 instruments or apparatus forwarded by the Committee would be defrayed by 

 the Government, your Committee requested Colonel Sabine, Mr. Welsh, and 

 the Chairman, to attend the Royal Society Paris Exhibition Committee, to 

 explain that the Kew Committee would most readily afford every assistance 

 in their power to carry out the wishes of Her Majesty's Government. 



The sum of £140 was ultimately awarded by the Royal Society Com- 

 mittee for this purpose, and the instruments have been prepared and forwarded 

 to Paris. 



The following letter from Mr. John Welsh, addressed to the Chairman 

 of the Committee, is presented as a part of this Report. 



" Kew Observatory, June 26, 1855. 



" Dear Sir, — Colonel Sabine furnished, from the Stores in the depart- 

 ment under his control at Woolwich, several of the instruments which had 

 been in use at the British Colonial Magnetical Observatories ; and he also 

 procured to be sent from Messrs. Jones and Barrow such of the smaller 

 portable instruments as are employed in magnetical surveys. 



" At the Observatory, specimens of the self-recording magnetical and 

 meteorological instruments of Mr. Ronalds were put in order, several small 

 alterations in their adjustments being necessary in order to adapt them to the 

 circumstances of the Exhibition. The two instruments sent, viz. the Bifilar 

 Magnetograph and the Bai'oraetrograph, were sufficient to illustrate in every 

 particular the principle of Mr. Ronalds's method of recording magnetical and 

 meteorological phsenomena ; whilst a few specimens of the actual work of 

 these instruments served to show the degree of accuracy of which they were 

 capable. 



*' Portions of an electrical apparatus were so arranged as to illustrate the 

 methods of insulation and of observation employed in the larger atmospheric 

 electrometer of Mr. Ronalds. 



" A complete meteorological thermometer-stand, similar to the one 

 actually in use at the Observatory (described in the Report of the Kew 

 Committee to the meeting at Liverpool, 1854), was constructed under my 

 own superintendence, and furnished with instruments chiefly graduated by 

 myself. 



" Some of the standard thermometers graduated at the Observatory have 



