82 
GEOGRAPHIC LITERATURE 
not the same in all places. That it is not always the same at any one 
place is said to have been discovered by Columbus ; so that the variation 
of the variation is a discovery four centuries old. That the needle, if free 
to move in any direction, would not “ hang level,” but that one end 
would decline or dip below the horizon, is also an old discovery, having 
been discovered by Georg Hartmann in 1-544; and, lasth’, that the force 
that acts upon the needle to make it point north and south is not the 
same in all places has been long known. 
The tme cause of the behavior of a compass needle has been a field for 
speculation and study ever since its peculiar behavior was observed, and 
a few students had up to the time of Gauss proposed and laboriously 
worked out ingenious theories to explain the phenomena observed. The 
publication of Gauss’ great work in 1838, however, marked a great ad- 
vance and gave a new and powerful impulse to the subject. The Mag- 
netic Union, fonned in the third decade of the present century, chiefly 
owing to the researches of Gauss, cau.sed the establishment in various 
j»arts of the world of magnetic observatories, founded and maintained by 
various governments. Of those so founded in the forties, several have 
maintained a series of almost uninterrupted observations to this day. 
This period of 60 yeare has seen j>rogress in our knowledge of terrestrial 
magnetism, but without any epoch-marking event. A vast number of 
observations have been accumulated, the 24 constants in Gauss’ funda- 
mental formula have been more accuratel}' determined, and a numl>er of 
minor phenomena observed and explained, but the subject is far from 
being exhausted. The modern ai>plications of electricity to practical affairs 
is not without its effect uj)on the subject of terrestrial magnetism. 
Is not the journal before us, then, to mark a new epoch in our knowl- 
edge of this subject? It seetns strange that, when almost every other 
branch of science has long had its special journal or organ, we should have 
waited almost for the dawn of the twentieth century for the first number 
of the first journal devoted to a matter of such great practical moment and 
for four centuries known by all civilized men to be important. 
We welcome this journal, then, as a needed one, rightly conceived and 
giving promise of usefulness. It enters, and enters under favorable au- 
spices, a field not hitherto occupied by any scientific journal. The names 
of the editors, the laboratory, and university from which it comes all 
combine to promise excellent results. It will be strange indeed if dis- 
tinct gains in human knowledge do not result from this enterprise. 
The editor. Dr Bauer, though a young man, is a most enthusiastic 
student in his chosen field. After several years of service in the United 
States Coast and Geodetic Survey, devoted chiefly to magnetic computa- 
tion, he went to Europe and devoted his energies to magnetic studies. 
Ilis doctor’s degree was obtained last year, as the outcome of these studies. 
To him more than to any other belongs the credit of founding the first 
journal given wholly to the subject of terrestrial magnetism, and patriotic 
Americans will perhaps derive some satisfaction from the fact that the 
journal was founded in the United States. 
To the editor and his associates and to the University of Chicago we 
tender our congratulations and hope for them a large measure of success. 
