59 



applied, and carrying out measures for preserving the health of his 

 crews, in which, though he maintained strict discipline, he gained 

 their esteem. He owed much of his success to a rigid observance of 

 Sunday, making it a complete day of rest. And it is said that in 

 " his later voyages he adopted the temperance principle on board his 

 vessel, finding that hot coffee was a very much stronger preservative 

 than spirits against the intense cold of arctic regions." 



On the death of his second wife in 1822, Capt. Scoresby relin- 

 quished the whale fishery, and thenceforth devoted himself to scientific 

 pursuits and religious duties on shore. He had been for some time 

 a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, when in 1824 he was 

 elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London, and subsequently 

 he was chosen a member of the section Geography and Navigation, 

 of the Academy of Sciences of the Institute of France. Yielding 

 however to the religious convictions which had always characterized 

 him, he entered himself as a student of Queen's College, Cambridge, 

 where he took his degree of B.D. in 1834, followed afterwards by 

 that of D.D. and entrance into Holy Orders. He officiated for 

 awhile at the Mariners' Church, Liverpool, then at Exeter, and at 

 Bradford in Yorkshire, but eventually resigned the living and retired 

 to Torquay. 



Here he applied himself anew to the study of magnetic phenomena, 

 and published in a collected form, with new facts and observations, 

 the various papers which had appeared from his hand in the Edin- 

 burgh Philosophical Journal, the Transactions of the Royal Society 

 of Edinburgh, and the Philosophical Transactions. The import- 

 ant questions of the effect of the iron of ships upon the compass 

 the effect of concussion and of change of latitude on the permanent 

 magnetism of iron ships the capacity and retentiveness of steel in 

 different states for the magnetic condition the nature and phenomena 

 of magnetic induction, and other allied questions, are discussed in the 

 publication referred to, which appeared at intervals from 1839 to 

 1852, in three volumes, under the title of 'Magnetical Investi- 

 gations.' 



The Reports of the British Association also contain papers by Dr. 

 Scoresby on these subjects. At the meeting of that body at Glasgow 

 in 1 855, he communicated additional evidence in favour of his views 

 and suggestions, particularly on the question of elevating the com- 



