1021 



SABINE, MAJOR-GENERAL EDWARD, R.A. 



SCHLEIDEN, M. J. 



1022 



* SABINE, MAJOR-GENERAL EDWARD, R.A., Vice-President 

 and Treasurer of the Royal Society, one of the distinguished leaders in 

 the conquest of nature, which the scientific branches of the British 

 Army have contributed to society, is of Irish extraction, and was 

 born in 1790. He first became known to the public, as Lieutenant 

 Sabine, from his accompanying Captain(afterwards Sir John Ross), and 

 Lieutenant (afterwards Sir Edward) Parry, in the first Arctic Expedi- 

 tion of the series to which it belonged. The results of the magnetic 

 observations which were made by him in the course of the voyage 

 must be looked to, as an eminent philosopher, Dr. Peacock, has lately 

 observed, "as having given the first great impulse to the systematic 

 study of the phenomena of terrestrial magnetism." It appeared from 

 the statement which he communicated to the Royal Society upon his 

 return (in two papers inserted in the ' Philosophical Transactions ' for 

 1819, being his first contributions to that collection), that the directive 

 force of the horizontal magnetic needle in the Arctic regions was so 

 much reduced by the greatness of the vertical force occasioning the 

 dip, that the best suspended compasses not only traversed with great 

 difficulty, but were so much dominated by the magnetism, whether 

 induced or permanent, of the masses of iron in the ships themselves, 

 that their indications became utterly useless. The peculiar character 

 of the mind of Captain Sabine, as he had now become, leading him to 

 experimental or observational research in those departments of terres- 

 trial physics, which, the forces to be observed or measured, varying 

 with the geographical position of the place, require for their investiga- 

 tion, the transport of instruments or apparatus from latitude to lati- 

 tude, he commenced in 1821 a series of voyages, from the equator to 

 the arctic circle, principally in order to determine the length of the 

 seconds' pendulum in various latitudes and localities. The results, 

 which were of great value in relation to the figure of the earth, were 

 published in a quarto volume in 1825, together with Geographical, 

 Hydrographical, and Atmospherical notices. This valuable work is now 

 rare, having, with a too scrupulous conscientiousness been to a great ex- 

 tent suppressed by the author, in consequence of certain clerical errors 

 in reading the graduated limb of a small astronomical circle, of which it 

 would have sufficed widely to make known the correction. Similar re- 

 searches and observations continued for some years to engage Captain 

 Sabine's attention, in the intervals of his military duty in Ireland, in the 

 course of which he attained the rank of Major. In 1836 he made some 

 valuable observations on the direction and intensity of the magnetic 

 force in Scotland, which he communicated to the British Association 

 at the sixth meeting, held at Bristol in that year, in the ' Reports ' of 

 which they were published. To the meeting at Liverpool, in the 

 following year, he communicated an elaborate Report ' on the variations 

 of the magnetic intensity observed at different points of the earth's 

 surface.' In the next year he produced a memoir on the magnetic 

 isoclinal and isodynamic lines in the British Islands. These, and sub- 

 sequent contributions to the subject, either theoretical or practical, 

 gradually paved the way for the establishment of permanent magnetical 

 observatories, and especially for those established by the British govern- 

 ment in various colonies, at the joint recommendation of the Royal 

 Society and British Association. These have supplied the most precious 

 results. In the words, again, of Dr. Peacock, it is to this " distin- 

 guished observer, that we are chiefly indebted for the organisation of 

 the vast system of magnetic observatories which have been established 

 in later times, and for the complete discussion of the observations 

 which they have afforded, and which have totally changed the aspect 

 of the science of magnetism." 



The colonial observatories are under the superintendence of General 

 Sabine, whose discussions of the observations have been, communicated 

 to the Royal Society, and published in the < Philosophical Transac- 

 tions,' and also, together with the observations themselves, in a series 

 of large volumes. Two of the latest most striking inductions made 

 from them by him are the magnetic operation of the sun, independent 

 of its heat, and the coincidence of the period of certain magnetic 

 phenomena, with that of the cycle of changes of the solar spots. But 

 his introduction to the Toronto observations, last published, vol. iii., 

 also made public in the 'Proceedings of the Royal Society,' 1857, is 

 memorable in a higher point of view. It contains the recommenda- 

 tions of the philosopher, full of years and honour, as to what is now 

 desirable in the continuance of the Observatories ; on which subject 

 he remarks, with a feeling all will appreciate, " There is another advan- 

 tage (if it be one) which might attend the early prosecution " [of what 

 he recommends] " 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 com- 

 mencement now almost to its close ; but this, in the course of nature, 

 can only be available for a few years to come." 



We have been compelled to omit noticing many other researches, 

 observations, and experiments of General Sabine, especially on the 

 Pendulum and in Meteorology. Most of them have appeared in his 

 work already mentioned, and in the 'Transactions' of the Royal 

 Society, and British Association. Numerous minor but not unim- 

 portant papers by him will be found in the ' Philosophical Magazine.' 

 Ho was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society on the 16th of April 

 1818, and has held the offices of Treasurer and of a Vice-President 

 since the retirement in 1850 of Mr. George Rennie from them. Among 

 the active Fellows <?f the Society there are very few of equal seniority. 



He became a member of the British Association in 1837, and was 

 nominated on the council in the following year, and from 1839, with 

 abort intervals, he has been one of the general secretaries, and for some 

 years past sole general secretary : at the meeting at Belfast, in 1852, he 

 filled the honourable office of President. Mrs. Sabine is the translator 

 of Humboldt's 'Cosmos' and 'Aspects of Nature,' to which, but par- 

 ticularly to the ' Cosmos,' General Sabine added many valuable notes 

 in his own branch of science. 



The elder brother of the subject of this notice, Mil. JOSEPH SABINE, 

 F.R.S., F.L.S., who held for the greater part of his life the responsible 

 office of Inspector-General of Taxes, was educated in the University of 

 Dublin, and devoted himself from a very early period of life to the 

 study of botany, ornithology, and other branches of natural history. 

 He became secretary to the Horticultural Society of London at the 

 period of its first establishment, and must always be considered as the 

 chief author of its successful and complete development ; in addition 

 to his official and editorial services, contributing to its ' Transactions ' 

 no fewer than sixty-four papers, the most important of which are 

 those on the genera Crocus, Dahlia, and Chysanthemum. He was also 

 an active and valuable early member of the Zoological Society, whose 

 gardens were greatly indebted to his taste. He died in 1837. 



MR. HENRY BROWNE, F.R.S., of Portland-place, London, whose wife 

 was sister to these gentlemen, deserves mention here, because (in the 

 words of the late Mr. Davies Gilbert, M.P., President of the Royal 

 Society, in his Anniversary Address to that body for 1830) " No man was 

 ever more distinguished in the important station of commanding those 

 vessels which secure to England the commerce of nations unknown to 

 former ages ; nor did any one more largely contribute towards intro- 

 ducing the modern refinements of nautical astronomy, which, skil- 

 fully pursued, and under favourable circumstances, determined the 

 place of a ship with greater accuracy than what in the early part of 

 the last century would have been thought amply sufficient for head- 

 lands, roadsteads, or harbours of the first importance. Retired 



to private life,- Mr. Browne usefully amused his declining years by a 

 continuance of his favourite pursuits ; and up to the latest period of 

 his life he patronised, encouraged, and promoted practical astronomy." 

 His house in Portland-place (No. 2, s'ituated in N. lat. 51 31' 8 r> -4) 

 is a classical locality in the history of English terrestrial physics. 

 Captain Kater's [KATER, HENRY] original experiments, made with his 

 own convertible pendulum, for determining the length of the seconds' 

 pendulum in the latitude of London, as the intended standard of 

 linear measure, were made in Mr. Browne's house, and with his assist- 

 ance. ('Phil. Trans.,' 1818.) Mr. Browne had become possessed of 

 the standard scale of General Roy, which formed the basis of the 

 Trigonometrical Survey of Great Britain. Here also, and with the 

 same aid, General (then Captain) Sabine made his final observations 

 for determining the oscillation of the pendulum in different latitudes, 

 as observed in the first two Arctic expeditions. (' Phil. Trans.,' 1821.) 



* SCHLEIDEN, M. J., a distinguished German botanist and physio- 

 logist, professor of botany in the University of Jena. He was educated 

 for the medical profession and studied under his uncle, Professor 

 Horkel of Berlin, who is well-known for his researches upon vegetable 

 physiology. One of the earliest productions of Professor Schleiden, by 

 which his name became associated in Europe with discoveries in vege- 

 table physiology, was entitled ' Contributions to Phytogenesis,' and 

 published in Muller's ' Archiv fiir Anatomie und Physiologic,' Part II. 

 for 1838. This paper was translated by Dr. Francis, and published in 

 the second volume of Taylor's ' Scientific Memoirs.' It was also 

 republished by the Sydenham Society in England, in 1847. This 

 indicates the importance attached to this paper. In it the author, for 

 the first time, drew attention to the process of the growth of cells. 

 It had already been shown that vegetable tissue consisted almost 

 entirely of cells, but Schleiden now asserted that every vegetable 

 tissue originated in cells, and that every cell originated in a nucleus or 

 small mass of nitrogenous matter, which he called a 'cytoblast.' 

 He supported the enunciation of this great law by a vast number 

 of observations made by the microscope, and drew attention to the 

 fact, that henceforth the functions of the life of plants must be studied 

 from the point of view of the function of each individual cell. The 

 sensation produced by this paper can hardly be overrated. At first it 

 excited opposition amongst botanists, but this opposition had hardly 

 time to declare itself before a paper appeared by Dr. Thomas Schwann, 

 professor of anatomy in Louvain, entitled ' Microscopical Researches 

 into the Accordance in the Structure and Growth of Animals and 

 Plants,' in March 1839. In this essay Dr. Schwann demonstrated that 

 the law which Schleiden had laid down for the vegetable kingdom was 

 equally applicable to the animal kingdom. He showed that the tissues 

 of animals were, like those of plants, made up of cells, and that each 

 cell originated in a primitive cytoblast. Although the views of 

 Schleiden and Schwann have been somewhat modified by the progress 

 of discovery, the great fundamental facts which they made known 

 in the above papers lie at the present moment at the foundation of all 

 physiological science, and the period which was thus initiated may 

 be regarded as even of more importance than that which occurred on 

 the discovery of the circulation of the blood by Harvey. 



Since the period of the production of this great paper, Schleiden 

 has very constantly appeared before the world as a contributor of 

 facts to the science of vegetable physiology. The result of his 



