CHAPTER XII 



PRESIDENTSHIPS OF SIR EDWARD SABINE, SIR GEORGE 

 BIDDELL AIRY, AND SIR JOSEPH DALTON HOOKER, 



1861-1878 



SIR EDWARD SABINE was seventy-three years of age when 

 he was chosen President of the Royal Society, and he held 

 the office for ten years. He brought to the discharge of 

 its duties a wide experience of men, a long familiarity with 

 official life, and a high reputation as a man of science. He 

 had seen much active service both in the Army and the 

 Nav}?. As a captain of Royal Artillery he had taken part 

 in the Niagara frontier campaign of 1814, and as astronomer 

 attached to Ross's Expedition in 1818 and to Parry's in 

 1819, he had shared in the hardships and excitement of 

 Arctic research. His attention had then been especially 

 drawn to the problems of magnetism. Between 1821 and 

 1827 he made a number of voyages to different latitudes for 

 the purpose of instituting pendulum and magnetic observa- 

 tions. He took part in a magnetic survey of the British 

 Islands, and he discussed the distribution of magnetism over 

 the globe. To him it was in no small degree owing that 

 the science of Terrestrial Magnetism was established. His 

 scientific attainments were called into use in other directions. 

 Thus in 1825 he and John Frederick Herschel were appointed 

 joint-commissioners with the French geodesists to deter- 

 mine the difference of longitude between the observatories 

 of Greenwich and Paris. He served for nearly twenty years 

 as effective Secretary of the British Association, and in 1852 



