TWO MAGNETS WITHIN THE EARTH. 107 



The investigations are contained in a work entitled 

 Magnetismus der Erde' It will readily be conceived 

 that this is a problem of great complexity. A great 

 number of positions of the magnets were tried, but 

 no one of them was quite satisfactory, though the 

 results were superior to those derived from a single 

 magnet. 



As nothing has really resulted from this theory, 

 it does not appear desirable to load the present 

 Treatise with its laborious investigations. We may 

 however remark that the known phgenomena of ob- 

 servation amply justified the undertaking; and that, 

 if it had not been made, we should often have felt 

 that one possible opportunity of explaining Terrestrial 

 Magnetism had been rejected. 



47. Gauss s more general explanation of Terrestrial 

 Magnetism by supposing that the red and blue magnet- 

 isms are distributed irregularly through the earth. 



The investigation of this theory is given by Gauss 

 in the Resultate &c. des Magnetischen Vereins for the 

 year 1838; and a complete English translation of it 

 is published in Taylor's Scientific Memoirs, volume ii. 

 We shall not attempt here to explain all the generali- 

 ties of this most elegant treatise. It will be sufficient 

 to point out those parts which lead ultimately to the 

 comparison of the results of theory with observation 

 of the most extensive and most accurate kind. 



It is supposed, as a law to which we are led by 

 previous magnetic investigations, that the quantities 



