102 THE president's ADDRESS. 



" no longer one of doubtful experiment, and to give it that further 

 " extension whicli the interests of science require." 



That the task of determining the true laws of the phenomena 

 observed, is, as yet, very far from being accomplished, cannot be 

 denied ; but this should not for an instant create doubt or hesitation. 

 Nearly two centuries have been found insufficient to work out all 

 the consequences of the principle of gravitation. The discoveries, 

 with regard to magnetism, are apparently only opening out to view 

 wider and wider fields of inquiry. Piofessor Faraday, in speaking 

 of the coincidence which has been observed between the maxima 

 and minima of the daily magnetic variation in declination, and the 

 increase and decrease of the solar spots, remarks that " the obser- 

 " vation.of such a coincidence ought to urge us more than ever into 

 " an earnest and vigorous investigation of the true and intimate 

 " nature of magnetism, by means of which we now have hopes of 

 " touching, in a new direction, not merely this remarkable force of 

 " the earth, but even the like powers of the sun itself." To 

 this it may be added that a similar anticipation may be indulged 

 with regard also to that luminary which " governs the night," when 

 we remember that remarkable discovery of the variation in the earth's 

 magnetic force, which has been shewn by G-eneral Sabine — chiefly 

 from the Toronto observations, — to depend on the place of the Moon. 



In addition to the foregoing testimony in reference to the Obser- 

 vatory, Major G-eneral Sabine, at the Dublin meeting of the British 

 Association, last year, instituted a comparison between the observa- 

 tions at Toronto and those made by Captain McG-uire and the 

 officers of H.M.S. Plover, at Point Barrow, in 1852-3-4, when 

 employed in searching after Sir John Pranklin ; and when they 

 found employment during seventeen months unremittingly, in observ- 

 ing and recording, every hour, the variations of the magnebical and 

 concomitant natural phenomena, on that dreary and inhospitable ice- 

 bound shore. The selection of the observations at Toronto, for the 

 purpose of comparison, is a proof as well of the accui'acy of the 

 observations themselves, as of the value of Toronto as a place for an 

 Observatory ; and we may congratulate ourselves, that the Provin- 

 cial Grovernment resolved on recommending to the Canadian Legisla- 

 ture, and that the latter most liberally responded to the recommen- 

 'dation, to continue the Observatory as a Provincial establishmenfc, 

 placing the financial responsibility and the general oversight, under 

 the control of the Senate of the University of Toronto. 



The Canadian people, by whom the advantage of the electric tele- 



