MAGNETIC AND METEOROLOGICAL OBSERVATORIES. 301 
the expectations which may justly be indulged on that score. In reference, 
moreover, to the personal and material establishment at each of the Govern- 
ment observatories, this document contains a summary of what is needed, 
and of what ought to be applied for. : 
And this leads your Committee to a point which they consider of such 
importance to the success of the whole proceeding, that they cannot help 
embodying their opinion on it in this Report. It is of little avail to accu- 
mulate observations unless their effective and complete reduction be provided 
for, and the assurance obtained that when reduced they will undergo such 
discussion and scientific treatment as shall elicit from them the laws of the 
phenomena of which they are the records. The zeal and ability with which 
the present Superintendent of the Government Magnetic and Metevrological 
Observatories has hitherto executed this task, if extended to the new series 
now ealled for, would afford that assurance in its fullest extent ; and they 
earnestly trust that this will not be lost sight of in the arrangements to be 
made in carrying out their proposals, if adopted. 
There is another point to which your Committce consider their attention 
ought to be paid simultaneously with the establishment of the proposed ob- 
servatories :—it is that of the extension of Magnetic Surveys of the districts 
in their immediate neighbourhood, with a view to fixing the situation and 
direction of the iso-magnetic curves within some considerable adjoining 
area (in the ease of the Falkland Isles, that of the whole group). 
On this point the following remarks by General Sabine, in a communica- 
tion addressed by him to us in reply to certain inquiries which we considered 
it right to make of him, are, in the opinion of your Committee, conclusive in 
deciding them to recommend that provision be also made for the execution 
of such surveys, collaterally with the observations at the fixed stations. 
* Recent observations in North America, discussed in the proceedings of 
the Royal Society for January 7th, 1858, have made known that the general 
movement of translation of the isoclinal and isogonic lines, which from the 
earliest observations have been progressing from West to East, has within a 
few years reached its extreme eastern oscillation, and that the movement in 
the reverse direction has already commenced ; we live therefore at an epoch 
in the history of terrestrial magnetisin which we have reason to believe will 
be regarded hereafter—when theory shall have more advanced—as a highly 
important and critical epoch. The geographical position of the maximum 
force in the Northern Hemisphere appears to have reached its extreme 
easterly elongation, and from this time forth may be expected to move for 
many years to come towards the meridian which it occupied in Halley’s time, 
accompanied by a corresponding change in the positions and forms of the 
isodynamic, isoclinal, and isogonic lines in North America; a careful de- 
termination of the absolute values and present secular change of the three 
elements at this critical theoretical epoch, at stations situated at either side 
of the American continent, and nearly in the geographical latitude of the 
maximum of the force, would furnish therefore data for posterity, of the 
value of which we may have a very inadequate appreciation at present. I 
may refer to the discussion prefixed to the third volume of the ‘Toronto Ob- 
servations, to show that the means and methods with which we are conversant 
are adequate for the purpose, and I may indicate Vancouver Island and 
Newfoundland as colonies well suited for establishments of the same nature 
as those of which the efficiency has been proved.” 
As regards the instrumental means to be employed, the Committee believe 
that the consideration of the subject would be more fitly undertaken by the 
Royal Society, who will probably think it right to appoint a special committee, 
