Proceedings of the British Association. 93 



distribution of observing stations, and by a steady, persevering, sys- 

 tematic attack, to which every civilized nation, as it has a direct 

 interest in the result, ought to feel bound to contribute its con- 

 tingent. 



I trust that the time is not far distant when such will be the case, 

 and when no nation, calling itself civilized, will deem its institutions 

 complete, without the establishment of a permanent physical observa- 

 tory, with at least so much provision for astronomical and magnetic 

 observation as shall suffice to make it a local centre of reference for 

 geographical determination and trigonometrical and magnetic surveys 

 — which latter, if we are ever to attain to a theory of the secular 

 changes of the earth's magnetism, will have to be repeated at intervals 

 of twenty or thirty years for a long while to come. Rapidly progres- 

 sive as our colonies are, and emulous of the civilization of the mother 

 country, it seems not too much to hope from them, that they should 

 take upon themselves, each according to its means, the establishment 

 and maintenance of such institutions, both for their own advantage 

 and improvement, and as their contributions to the science of the 

 world. A noble example has been set them in this respect, within a 

 very few months, by our colony of British Guiana, in which a society 

 recently constituted, in the best spirit of British co-operation, has 

 established and endowed an observatory of this very description, fur- 

 nishing it partly from their own resources, and partly by the aid of 

 Government with astronomical, magnetic, and meteorological instru- 

 ments, and engaging a competent observer, at a handsome salary, to 

 work the establishment — an example which deserves to be followed 

 wherever British enterprise has struck root and nourished. 



The perfectly unbroken and normal registry of all the meteorologi- 

 cal and magnetic elements — and of tidal fluctuations where the locality 

 admits — would form the staple business of every such observatory, 

 and, according to its means of observation, periodical phenomena of 

 every description would claim attention, for which the list supplied 

 by M. Quetelet, which extends not merely to the phases of inani- 

 mate life, but to their effects on the animal and vegetable creation, 

 will leave us at no loss beyond the difficulty of selection. The division 

 of phenomena which magnetic observation has suggested, into perio- 

 dical, secular, and occasional, will apply mutatis mutandis to every 



