ON, MAGNETIC DISTURBANCES AT TORONTO. 157 
tion among races occupying the British Islands in ages long anterior 
to earliest history ; and among the savage tribes of America, and the 
simple Islanders of the Pacific in the present day. They illustrate, 
with even greater force than the rude implements of flint and stone 
found in early British graves, the exceedingly primitive condition of 
the British Islanders of prehistoric times. 
ON THE MAGNETIC DISTURBANCES AT TORONTO 
DURING THE YEARS 1856 TO 1862, INCLUSIVE. 
BY G. T. KINGSTON, M. A. 
DIRECTOR OF THE MAGNETIC OBSERVATORY. 
A few years prior to the establishment of the Colonial Magnetic 
observatories in 1839-40, the attention of philosophers in Germany 
had been directed to certain magnetic phenomona, consisting sometimes 
in abrupt changes of short duration, and sometimes in along continued 
abnormal condition of the magnetic elements. These disturbances as 
they are termed, at first attributed to variations in atmospheric tem- 
perature and other local causes, were discovered by comparing precon- 
certed contemporaneous observations to prevail simultaneously, and 
to correspond in direction, and to great extent also in amount, at differ- 
ent and distant parts of Germany. The improbability of local origin 
which this synchronism in their occurrence indicated, and the proba- 
bility wherewith it suggested some extra terrestrial influence, was 
greatly strengthened by the observations at the observatories at To- 
ronto, Hobarton, &c., which first brought to light the fact that the 
disturbances occurred simultaneously, not only within a small region 
in Europe, but also at stations widely removed from each other on the 
earth’s surface. It was found, however, that the disturbing influence 
would frequently affect different elements at two distant stations, or 
the same element to a different extent or in an opposite direction. 
It was further made known that the disturbances, though in the 
ordinary sense irregular, are subject in their frequency and aggregate 
amount to definite periodic laws, manifesting a preference, so to 
speak, for certain hours of the day and night, and for certain months 
in the year. : 
