1 88 SIEGE OF THE SOUTH POLE 
ing o’er Antarctic land, discovered by the zeal and in- 
trepidity of British seamen.” 
No direct result followed the effort of A. Z., the Royal 
Geographical Society remained impervious to the ap- 
peals of its secretary, seconded as these no doubt were by 
Mr. Enderby, and so it had no part in the great era of 
Antarctic research. Dumont D’Urville who was on the 
point of sailing with a French expedition, part of whose 
programme was to attain a high southern latitude, trans- 
lated the letter for the Paris Geographical Society and 
doubtless laid to heart its patriotic appeals mutatis mutan- 
dis .... The dispatch of Balleny on his southern cruise 
which has already been described was also possibly in 
part a result of the letter. 
The British Association, meeting at Liverpool in 1837, 
received Sabine’s great Report on the variations of Mag- 
netic Intensity, in the course of which he again strongly 
urged the dispatch of an Antarctic expedition. He 
quoted a letter from Professor Hansteen who said that 
the poor Norwegian nation had through its Storthing 
voted a handsome sum towards a magnetic expedition 
into Siberia in the very session in which they had refused 
a grant for a new royal palace in Christiania, and this 
being so it was not too much to expect the wealthy Brit- 
ish nation to make itself responsible for a magnetic sur- 
vey of the whole southern part of the Earth. Sabine 
concluded by saying that there was a naval officer avail- 
able eminently fitted to be the leader “ and if fitting instru- 
ments make fitting times, none surely can be better than 
the present.” 
In May, 1838, the Royal Society appointed a committee 
on mathematics and physics to deliberate further on the 
question of magnetic observatories and a South Polar 
