838 Proceedings of the British Association. 



hitherto reached them, appear to be going on prosperously iti all 

 its parts, and to promise results fully answerable to every expec- 

 tation of its promoters. Neither would they feel justified in their 

 own eyes, were they to omit expressing their deep and grate- 

 ful sense of the indefatigable personal exertions of luajor Sabine 

 throughout the whole of the progress, both in carrying on a most 

 voluminous correspondence, in ordering, arranging and dispatch- 

 ing instruments, and facilitating, by constant attention and ac- 

 tivity, those innumerable details which are involved in a combin- 

 ation so extensive,- — a combination, which, but for those exer- 

 tions, your committee are fully of opinion must have been greatly 

 wanting in that unity of design and cooperation which now so 

 eminently characterizes it. — Signed, on the part of the commit- 

 tee, J. F. W. Herschel. 



The following is a list of the magnetic observatories establish- 

 edby the Russian government, viz. St. Petersburgh, Catharinen- 

 burgh, Barnaoul, Nertchinsk, Kazan, Nikolaieff, Tiflis, Sitka, (N. 

 W. coast of America,) Helsingfors in Finland, and Pekin in 

 China. 



The Astronomer Royal announced that her Majesty's govern- 

 ment had sanctioned the establishment of a magnetic observa- 

 tory at the Royal Observatory at Greenwich. In reference to 

 the aurora seen at Toronto, in Upper Canada, on the 29th of May, 

 and to the magnetic perturbations by which its perturbations had 

 been accompanied, he stated that the term day of the 29th, and 

 30th of May, 1840, had also been kept at the Royal Observatory 

 at Greenwich ; that an aurora was seen there also on the 29th, 

 and that the disturbances of the declination magnetometer ex- 

 ceeded in any amount which had been observed there on previous 

 occasions. Observations had for some time past, been made un- 

 der his superintendence, and he had observed some remarkable 

 auroral disturbances of the needle, when the amount of the de- 

 flection had, as well as he remembered, exceeded half a degree. 

 The coincidence of these disturbances had not been exact ; at 

 Greenwich as in America, they had been found to occur earlier 

 than in those places more to the east. 



Dr. Lamont gave an account of the magnetic observatory at 

 Munich, regular observations at which, were begun Aug. 1, 1840. 

 It diflfers in two respects from other establishments of this kind. 

 It is 13 feet below the earth's surface, thus affording the advan- 



