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of view, the Globe which we inhabit is quite as important a subject of 

 scientific inquiry as the Stars. We depend for our bread of life, and 

 every comfort, on its climates and seasons, on the movements of its 

 winds and waters. We guide ourselves over the ocean, when Astrono- 

 mical observations fail, by our knowledge of the laws of its Magnetism; 

 we learn the sublimest lessons from the records of its Geological history ; 

 and the great facts which its figure, magnitude, and attraction ofiier to 

 mathematical inquiry, form the very basis of Astronomy itself. Terres- 

 trial Physics, therefore, form a subject every way worthy to be associ- 

 ated with Astronomy as a matter of universal interest and public 

 support, and one which cannot adequately be studied except in the 

 way in which Astronomy itself has been — by permanent establishments 

 keeping up an unbroken series of observation.' 



" Two of the leading branches of Terrestrial Physics — the sciences of 

 Meteorology and Magnetism — have now, as you know, for the last six 

 years, been investigated after one uniform and comprehensive scheme, 

 in more than thirty observing stations scattered over the entire globe ; 

 and the very bounds of civilization itself have been overleaped in order 

 to give a wider development to the system. In order to realize the view 

 which Sir John Herschel has so often and so ably advocated, it is only 

 necessary to gwe permanence \a the more important of these Observa- 

 tories, and to enlarge somewhat their sphere of labour. All the phe- 

 nomena of which our Earth, its Ocean, or its Atmosphere, is the seat ; 

 the Tides and the Oceanic Currents, no less than the Winds ; the tem- 

 perature of the Earth and of the Sea, as well as that of the Air; the 

 movements of the earth's crust, whether calm or convulsive, no less than 

 the changes of the mysterious power which animates and pervades its 

 mass ; all these, and more which might be easily added, are the proper 

 subjects for continued and systematic observation. We have arrived 

 at a period in the history of these branches of science, when the more 

 obvious phenomena have revealed themselves to our desultory eflforts, 

 and when the precise laws, and the quantitative measurements, which 

 must form the basis of exact theory, can be reached only by sustained 

 and systematic exertion. 



" In these researches, no less than in those of Astronomy, this country 

 has taken its part. The Meteorological Observatory at the Ordnance 



