May 18, 1854. 

 The EARL of ROSSE, President, in the Chair. 



The following gentlemen were recommended by the Council for 

 election as Foreign Members : 



Karl Ernst von Baer. 

 Michel Chasles. 

 Friedrich Wohler. 



The following paper was read : 



" On some conclusions derived from the Observations of the 

 Magnetic Declination at the Observatory of St. Helena." 

 By Colonel EDWARD SABINB, R.A., V.P.R.S. Received 

 May 18, 1854. 



The author commences with the following preliminary remarks : 

 " The part taken by the Royal Society in promoting, by its influence 

 with Government, the establishment of the Colonial Magnetic Ob- 

 servatories, and in drawing up instructions for the guidance of those 

 who were employed in them, makes it the duty of the person charged 

 with their superintendence, to spare no pains to place before the 

 Fellows, on suitable occasions, the results of researches designed to 

 obtain a foundation of facts, on which a correct theory of the mag- 

 netic variations might be framed, and an insight be gained into the 

 nature of the physical agency by which they are produced. 



" In this first stage of scientific inquiry, when we have only the 

 phenomena themselves to guide us in their classification, or to indi- 

 cate by apparent correspondences the existence of some causal con- 

 nexion of which we have no other knowledge than that which the 

 observations themselves may afford, the first difficulty to be met 

 consists, in disentangling from the complication in which the mag- 



VOL. VII. I 



