lvi REPORT—1862. 
at great heights by means of Balloon Ascents. Four of these were made in 
1852, in which heights between nineteen and twenty thousand feet were 
reached. But in the present year Mr. Glaisher has attained an altitude of 
nearly thirty thousand feet. We may hope that some account of this daring 
achievement, and its results to science, may be laid before the Association at 
its present Meeting. 
Earthquake shocks were registered in Scotland by a Committee of the 
Association, from 1841 to 1844; and Mr. Mallet commenced, in 1847, a most 
valuable series of Reports on the Facts and Theory of Earthquake Phenomena 
from the earliest records to our own time, which have graced our volumes 
even to the one last published. 
One of the most remarkable and fruitful events in our history, in relation 
to Physical observations, is the grant by Her Majesty, in 1842, of the Obser- 
vatory erected at Kew by King George the Third, which had been long standing 
useless. It gave to the Society a fixed position, a depository for instruments, 
papers, and other property, when not employed in scientific inquiry, and a 
place where Members of the Association might prosecute various researches, 
This establishment has been, during the twenty years of its existence, gradually 
moulded into its present condition of a most valuable and unique establishment 
for the advancement of the Physical Sciences. 
After the first few years its existence was seriously perilled, for in 1845 
the expediency of discontinuing this Observatory began to be entertained ; 
but upon examination, it then appeared that the services to science already 
rendered by this establishment, and the facilities it afforded to Members of 
the Association for their inquiries, were so great as to make it most desirable 
to maintain it. Again, in 1848, the burthen of continuing this Observatory 
in a creditable state of efficiency pressed so heavily upon the funds of the Asso- 
ciation, then in a declining state, that the Council actually recommended its 
discontinuance from the earliest practical period. This resolution was hap- 
pily arrested. 
In 1850 the Kew Committee reported that the Observatory had given to 
science self-recording instruments for electrical, magnetical, and meteorolo- 
gical phenomena, already of great value, and certainly capable of great further 
improvement; and that if merely maintained as an Ewperimental Observatory, 
devoted to open out new physical inquiries and to make trial of new modes 
of research, but only in a few selected cases to preserve continuous records of 
passing phenomena, a moderate annual grant from the funds of the Associa- 
tion would be sufficient for this most valuable establishment for the adyance- 
ment of the Physical Sciences. 
In this year it fortunately happened that Lord J. Russell granted to the 
Royal Society the annual sum of £1000 for promoting scientific objects, out 
of which the Society allotted £100 for new instruments to be tried at Kew, 
—the first of a series of liberal grants which have not only very greatly con- 
tributed to the increasing efficiency of the establishment, but haye ensured 
its continuance. It now contains a workshop fitted with complete tools, and 
a lathe and planing machine, &c. by which apparatus can be constructed and 
repaired, and a dividing engine for graduating standard thermometers, all 
presented by the Royal Society. The work done, besides the maintenance 
of a complete set of self-recording magnetographs, established in 1857, at 
the expense of £250, by the Royal Society, consists in the construction and 
verification of new apparatus and in the verification of magnetic, meteorolo- 
gical and other instruments, sent for that purpose by the makers. For ex- 
ample, all the barometers, thermometers, and hydrometers required by the 
