Major-General Sabine on Colonial Magnetic Observatories. 309 
instruments, as well as keeping up and perfecting their skill in ob- 
servation,—and in contributing to arouse, to nourish, and to extend 
to other parts of natural knowledge, that desire for the greatest pos- 
sible accuracy, which was formerly met with only in astronomy and 
in geodesical operations of the highest class. 
When it was first suggested that the officers and soldiers of the 
scientific corps of the army (Artillery or Engineers) stationed in the 
Colonies might, both beneficially to themselves and advantageously 
to the public interests, be made available for the performance of 
such temporary services, the suggestion, from its novelty, might 
have been open to many objections. None were, indeed, made by 
the military authorities of the time, who on the contrary approved 
and encouraged the proposition. There may have been doubts en- 
tertained in other quarters whether persons, whose ordinary occu- 
pations were so dissimilar, would be found to possess the necessary 
qualifications for carrying out a scheme of exact and varied observa- 
tion, in which there was then no precedent to guide, and of which 
the performance would be sure to be extensively and closely scruti- 
nized: but such doubts, if they existed, have probably long since 
subsided, as the successive volumes of the Colonial Observatories 
have appeared. 
One great and unquestionable advantage which future institutions 
of this nature will have over those whose duties are accomplished, 
will be found in the assistance they will derive from the Physical 
Observatory of the British Association at Kew, as a head-quarter 
Observatory, in which their instruments can be prepared and ve- 
rified, the constants, &c. carefully determined, new instruments be 
devised as occasion may require, and tested by experiment before 
they are sent out for use, and to which practical difficulties of all 
kinds, which may present themselves to the directors, may be re- 
ferred. 
The omission of a provision of this kind when the Observatories 
were first formed, was undoubtedly a great fault, which has been, 
and could only be, very imperfectly remedied by the Woolwich esta- 
blishment, designed for a very different purpose, and insufficient 
even for the duties for which it was designed. 
There is another advantage (if it be one) which might attend the 
early prosecution, viz. the opportunity of consulting (if it were 
desired to consult) the experience of the person who has conducted, 
—and, as he believes, successfully conducted,—the first experiment, 
from its commencement now almost to its close; but this, in the 
course of nature, can only “be available for a few years to come. 
The Colonial establishments were instituted at the instance of the 
Royal Society and British Association, with a more general concur- 
rence and approval on the part of the cultivators of science in all 
parts of the globe than, it is believed, were ever before manifested in 
regard to any purely scientific undertaking ; and with such a cordial 
and effective cooperation of the public authorities as is well deserving 
of being held in remembrance. It is for those two great scientific 
