2l8 



NA TURE 



{July 5 , 1883 



therefore, now rests upon them, for he upon whom their 

 choice falls will not be merely the representative of 

 English science in London, he will represent it on the 

 Continent and in America ; the choice must bear the 

 criticism of scientific men in other lands. Editor 



S/R EDWARD SABINE 



SPOTTISWOODE, round whose grave in West- 

 minster Abbey so many men, great in so many 

 ways, have stood to-day, is not the only President of the 

 Royal Society, and not the only man of science whose 

 loss we have to deplore. While one, however, was cut 

 off in the full tide of his life, and while there seemed to 

 be a rich promise of many years of valuable work in 

 store, the other had far outlived his working powers, and 

 by many years exceeded those of his activity. 



A reference to the life-work of Sabine will clearly show 

 how justly his high position and reputation were accorded 

 to him, how nobly he has worked in the cause of science, 

 and how imperishable a record of his life remains in the 

 existence of a whole branch of scientific research, the 

 foundation of which was mainly due to his untiring 

 industry. 



Coming of an old family said to be of Italian origin, 

 which early settled in Normandy, and removed thence to 

 our own country, Edward Sabine was born in Dublin 

 on October 14, 178S, being the son of Mr. Joseph Sabine 

 of Tewin. He received his early education at the Royal 

 Military Colleges of Marlow and Woolwich, obtaining a 

 commission as second lieutenant when but fifteen years 

 of age, and receiving his captaincy eleven years later. 



Very early in life indeed, his interest became centred 

 in physical science, and especially in magnetism, the 

 study of which he pursued with indefatigable zeal and 

 marked success. The result of his work in this and 

 other fields is to be found in the many papers which 

 issued from his pen. In 1818, six years before Spottis- 

 woode was born, he was elected a member of the Royal 

 Society, and in the same year was appointed astronomer 

 to the expedition under the command of Sir John Ross 

 which left England in search of the North-west Passage. 

 The careful observations which he made whilst with the 

 expedition were of great value. His published papers 

 begin from this date, commencing with a contribution to 

 the Transactions of the Linnean Society, on the birds of 

 Greenland, the result of observations made during the 

 voyage ; they range from that date down to the year 1872, 

 thus extending over a period of no less than fifty-four 

 years. 



During this long period of active work he con- 

 tributed to the Transactions and Proceedings of various 

 societies and contemporary magazines upwards of one 

 hundred papers, some of great length and many of con- 

 siderable value and importance. Although a large 

 number of these deals with the subject of terrestrial mag- 

 netism, many other branches of science are included in 

 them, the voluminous nature of his published works being 

 not less remarkable than the wide fields of study over 

 which they range. 



A considerable number are to be found in the Philo- 

 sophical Transactions, to which he contributed upwards 

 of forty. To the Proceedings of the Royal Society he 



made numerous contributions during his long assoriation 

 with it ; in the Quarterly Journal of Science he published 

 twelve papers, in the Reports of 'the British Association 

 we find ten, to the Philosophical Magazine he made eight 

 contributions, the remainder of his published works being 

 scattered among the Edinburgh Journal of Science, 

 Journal of the Geographical Society, the Proceedings of 

 one or two foreign societies, and the pages of foreign 

 scientific magazines. 



As we have already said, his scientifi : contributions date 

 from his voyage to the Arctic regions with Sir John Ross 

 in 1818. Next year he again went to the Arctic regions, 

 this time with an expedition unier the command of Sir 

 Edward Parry. As the result of his observations there, 

 he made two communications to the Royal Society, pub- 

 lished in the Philosophical Transactions, dealing, the one 

 with the irregularities observed in the direction of the 

 compass needle consequent upon the attraction of the 

 iron of the ships, the other with the variations of the 

 magnetic needle, and the intensity of the magnetic force 

 during the voyage, and calling attention for the first time 

 to the extreme importance of founding a widely extended 

 series of observations of those strange magnetical dis- 

 turbances, the origin of which is still mysterious. With 

 this object in view he left England two years later on a 

 long voyage in H.M.S. Pheasant, making numerous 

 observations and bringing miny new facts to light. At 

 the same time at several equatorial stations on the coasts 

 of Africa and America he made observations with regard 

 to the swinging of the peniulum, with the object of deter- 

 mining the true figure of the earth, publishing the results in 

 the Philosophical Transactions. When on the American 

 coast during this voyage he took up amongst other 

 subjects the question of deep-sea temperatures, and in 

 the Philosophical Transactions for 1S23, he at that early 

 period published a paper on the temperature at great 

 depth; in the Caribbean Sea, whilst in the same year his 

 busy pen was giving an account of the barometrical 

 measurement of the height of the Sugarloaf Mountain at 

 Sierra Leone, and the Pico Ruivo in the Island of Madeira. 

 Three years later he published in the Quarterly Journal of 

 Science an account of the ocean currents met by H.M.S. 

 Pheasant during the voyage from Sierra Leone to Bahia, 

 and thence to New York, in which he records that the 

 Amazon stream was crossed at a distance of 300 miles 

 from the mouth of the river. In this year (1823) he 

 proceeded on another voyage, going this time in H.M.S. 

 Griper to Norway, Greenland, and Spitzbergen, to con- 

 tinue his magnetical observations, and to extend the 

 series of pendulum experiments. Whilst at the latter place 

 he again took up the question of barometrical measurement 

 of heights, publishing in the Philosophical Transactions for 

 1824a comparison of that method ot measurement with the 

 trigonometrical determinations. Then in the Edinburgh 

 Journal of Science in 1825 he dealt with the presence of 

 the Gulf Stream on the coasts of Europe as determined 

 by his observations in the year 1822, and proceeded to 

 discuss the question of depression over the region 

 occupied by the Stream. 



In 1826 an account of his magnetical observations at 

 Spitzbergen appeared in Poggendorff's Annalcn. 



Continuing his pendulum swingings in 1827, he set 

 about determining by direct observation the difference in 



