412 



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 wbich 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, 



