Meteorological Tables. 305 
great object to be attained in the establishment of an 
Observatory ; and that object having been attained, the 
connection of the British Government with the Observatory 
in Tasmania will cease in April 1853. I would recommend 
a careful examination of the volumes in question, (which 
have been presented to the Society by Sir Wm. Denison, 
from the British Government), to those members of the 
Society who take interest in such researches; but I have not 
considered the subject to be one of sufficiently general 
interest to encourage me to lay the details before them. 
With reference to what has been done since the establish- 
ment of the Magnetic Observatories in various parts of the 
globe in 1840,—at the Annual Meeting of the British 
Association at Belfast, in September 1852, the President 
observed in his Address, that “ terrestrial magnetism is a 
science which, perhaps more than any other, has profited 
by the impulse and systematic direction communicated to 
it by the British Association, and which, perhaps more than 
any other, required such external aid. In the infancy of 
a science, the phenomena of which present on our first 
acquaintance with them a great appearance of complexity, 
the path by which its progress may be advanced may be by 
no means easy to discern; and individual explorers may 
well, under such circumstances, be discouraged by doubts 
whether their labour will be recompensed by proportionate 
success, as well as disheartened by the little sympathy which 
is usually given to investigations which hold out but little 
immediate prospect of practical utility. Some there have 
been, however, from time to time, who, impressed with a 
persuasion of the position which magnetism deserves to 
take, and which, sooner or later, they believe it well take, 
amongst the physical sciences of the highest order, have 
not spared this precursive labour, and have been uniformly 
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