488 Anniversary Meeting. [Nov. 30, 



continued, might receive still further improvement ; and that possibly the 

 best arrangement at the present time would be that this branch of the 

 duties of the office should continue as at present, and be carried on under 

 the direction of Mr. Babington, by whom it had been virtually superin- 

 tended for several months past. 



With reference to those branches of inquiry which had been originally 

 suggested by the Royal Society in the letter of the President and Council 

 of February 22nd, 1855, the reply, as might reasonably be expected, was 

 of a more decided character. The most prominent amongst the objects 

 recommended in that letter was the collection and coordination of facts 

 bearing on what may perhaps not improperly be termed Oceanic Sta- 

 tistics, viz. all such facts as are required to enable a correct knowledge to 

 be formed of Currents of the Ocean, their direction, extent, velocity, and 

 the temperature of the water relatively to the ordinary ocean temperature 

 in the same latitude, together with the variations in all these respects 

 which currents experience in diiferent parts of the year and in different 

 parts of their course. These, as well as the facts connected with the great 

 persistent barometric elevations and depressions which we know to exist in 

 several oceanic localities, leading to a knowledge of their causes, as well as 

 of their influence on circumstances affecting navigation, were noticed in the 

 letter of February 1855 as inquiries well deserving the attention of a 

 country possessing such extensive maritime facilities and interests as ours, 

 and as likely to form a suitable contribution on our part to the general 

 system of meteorological inquiry which had then recently been adopted 

 by the principal continental states in Europe and America. 



It was learnt from Mr. Babington that much had been done by Ad- 

 miral FitzRoy in the three or four years succeeding the establishment 

 of his office (and before the subject of storm-warnings had engrossed the 

 greater part of his thoughts), in directing the attention of many of the 

 commanders of our merchant ships to the collection of suitable data, and 

 in improving their habits of observation and of record. The logs of 

 such vessels, we were informed, constitute at present a large collection of 

 documents existing in the office of the Board of Trade, partially examined, 

 and their contents partially classified. A full and careful examination 

 of these for the purpose of ascertaining the amount and value of their 

 contents was our first recommendation, to be combined with a considera- 

 tion of the most fitting mode in which the information they might be 

 found to contain may be made available for public use. Such an exami- 

 nation may also be expected to lead to improvements in the instructions 

 which have been issued to our merchant seamen, who have doubtless be- 

 come more competent to conduct, and even to extend, the observations for 

 these and similar purposes, than when the system was first introduced. 

 Those amongst us who have read with the attention it deserves the admirable 

 paper in which Captain Henry Toynbee has enriched our Proceedings 

 in the past year with the results of his five Indian voyages, will not doubt the 



