iv 



the regular term- days, but certain others also privately arranged by 

 Sir James Ross. Disturbances proved to be of pretty frequent 

 occurrence. He sent home traces of eight in 1841, of three in the 

 month of February, 1842, and others in August and September, 1842. 

 These and the whole of the six years' magnetical observations remain 

 unpublished — a circumstance which might have lent greater force to 

 the objections of Lord Ellenborough had he been able to foresee it. 

 There are some circumstances not easy to explain in connexion with 

 this fact. That the magnetic observations were not published and do 

 not exist in print is indubitable. But whether they were not printed 

 is subject to a curious doubt. The Government did sanction for this 

 purpose a printing establishment on a liberal scale, which was set up 

 by Major Boileau first at Simla, then at Ambala (in or about 1847), 

 and subsequently at Meerut, when he had been transferred to that 

 station. And in a memorandum of his employments and services, in 

 his own handwriting (dated 21st March, 1867) he enters : — " Super- 

 intended the printing of the whole of the observations taken at the Sim la 

 station. . . . This press was exclusively employed by the Govern- 

 ment IST.W. Provinces in printing Government work, and acquired a 

 high reputation for the accuracy and neatness with which especially 

 its tablework (forms of figures) was executed. After completing the 

 object for which it was established in connexion with the Simla Magnetic 

 Observatory, it was transferred to the College for Civil Engineering 

 at Roorkee, to which it is still attached. . . ." 



Also in a letter to Sir Henry Lefroy, dated 18th July, 1883, 

 General Boileau writes : — " The whole of the records and instruments 

 of the Simla Observatory were destroyed by fire in the year 1858, 

 owing to the cases in which they had been packed for transmission to 

 England, on my retirement from the Service in the beginning of 

 1857, having been transferred during the Mutiny from the safe 

 depository in which they had been placed by me, into a store-room in 

 which large quantities of dooly bedding had been stored away, and 

 which had taken fire, or been set on fire, to the utter annihilation 

 of the instruments, records, and printed observations of the Simla 

 Station." 



The letter last quoted proceeds : — " Copies of the monthly abstracts, 

 however, of the magnetic and meteorological observations of the 

 Simla Station had been regularly forwarded by me to the Royal 

 Society, and from them, with the sanction of the Government of India, 

 and by the kind aid of the Royal Society, the meteorological observa- 

 tions of the Simla Observatory were printed and published under 

 my superintendence in the year 1872. 



"None of the magnetical observations of the Indian Observatories 

 have been printed; although even at this distant time the results, if 

 published in a condensed form, would be of great interest." 



