Proceedings of the British Association. 287 



framers of this magnificent scientific operation ; the brilliant prospects 

 of discovery which it opened ; the noble spirit of co-operation which 

 it evoked in every part of the civilized world, were alluded to in 

 terms so eloquent and so just, in the opening address of Mr. W. 

 Vernon Harcourt, when occupying this chair at Birmingham [see 

 Athen. No. 618], that I should do little justice to them if I employed 

 any terms but his own, and I must content myself with simply re- 

 ferring to them. Much of what was then anticipated, has been 

 accomplished, much is in progress, and much remains to be done ; 

 but the results which have already been obtained have more than 

 justified our most sanguine expectations. 



Sir James Ross has returned without the loss of a man, without 

 a seaman on the sick list, after passing three summers in the 

 Antarctic seas, and after making a series of geographical discoveries 

 of the most interesting and important nature, and proving, in the 

 language of the address to which I have just referred, that for a 

 man, whose mind embraces the high views of the philosopher with 

 the intrepidity of the sailor, no danger, no difficulty, no incon- 

 venience could damp his ardour or arrest his progress, even in those 

 regions where 



Stern famine guards the solitary coast, 

 And winter barricades the realms of frost. 



The scientific results of the first two years of this remarkable 

 voyage have been discussed and published by Col. Sabine in his con- 

 tributions to Terrestrial Magnetism in the Transactions of the Royal 

 Society ; and they are neither few nor unimportant. They have shown 

 that observations of declination, dip, and intensity, the three magnetic 

 elements, may be made at sea with as much accuracy as on land, and 

 that they present fewer anomalies from local and disturbing causes : 

 that the effects of the ship's iron are entirely due to induced magne- 

 tism, including two species of it,— one instantaneous, coincident with 

 and superadded to the earth's magnetism, and the other a polarity 

 retained for a shorter or longer period, and transferable therefore 

 during its operation by the ship's motion from one point of space to 

 another : that in both cases they may be completely eliminated by 

 the observations and formulae which mathematicians have proposed 

 for that purpose : no intensity greater than 2.1 was observed ; and the 



2 p 



