374 Proceedings of the British Association. 



the current year, just when the arrangements were completed 

 over a great portion of the world, and the fruits were beginning 

 to be gathered in. Accordingly, application was made by the 

 President and Council of the Royal Society, for their continua- 

 tion for another period of three years, to terminate in 1845 ; and 

 at the same time it was officially stated on the part of the Rus- 

 sian government, that the observatories in that empire should be 

 kept up as long as the British ones, Baron Brunow stating, that 

 this extension was the shortest term adequate to obtain results to 

 repay, the outlay. The British government gave an unhesitating 

 assent to the continuation of the present scheme for three addi- 

 tional years. For this new period the past had been an excellent 

 preparation ; all improvements that experience could suggest would 

 be adopted ; the correction for the temperature of the magnets, 

 which is found to be the most important of all, will have been 

 determined. But the past had not been merely a season of pre- 

 paration ; it had afforded demonstrations of the ubiquity of those 

 singular disturbances called tnagnetic storQus, which could not 

 otherwise have been obtained, and also data for the revision of 

 the Gaussian theory. As to magnetic surveys ; — in South Afri- 

 ca, Lieut. Clark, R. A. had joined the observatory at the Cape, 

 as assistant to Capt. Wilraot ; and it was proposed that the survey 

 should comprehend, in addition to the colony, as extended a por- 

 tion of the earth's surface, from the observatory, as circumstances 

 would permit. The Admiralty had instructed the Admiral on 

 the station to permit the sea portion of the survey to be carried 

 into execution, so far as it was not prejudicial to the service, in 

 her Majesty's vessels, and these surveys would include the coast 

 on each side of the Cape, and then we should be better able to 

 judge of the expediency of completing the survey by an expedi- 

 tion into the interior. In North America, Lieut. Lefroy, R. A. 

 had been appointed to the principal observatory at Toronto, and 

 was now in England preparing instruments. The Hudson's Bay 

 Co, had liberally undertaken to furnish conveyances in the years 

 1843-4 and 1845, to extend the surveys to the Pacific Ocean ; 

 and they also offered passages on board their annual ships to Eng- 

 land, and this would enable them to include in this magnetic 

 survey Hudson's Bay and Straits. In the United States, Prof. 

 Bache, (of Philadelphia,) during the last summer, had completed 

 the survey of Pennsylvania, commenced in the previous year, in- 



