of Edinburgh, Session 1874-75. 
473 
the night or early morning of 21st June 1874 he had, as he thought, 
extinguished the gas in his small bachelor bedroom, but unfor- 
tunately had left the stop-cock open, and it was his not making 
any movement in the morning that attracted the notice of the 
servants ; one of them entering his room found him insensible, in 
an atmosphere strongly charged with gas, and, seeing at once what 
had happened, sagaciously opened the window, and got him to 
swallow some stimulant. His medical attendants succeeded in 
rousing him from his comatose state, and he seemed in the fair way 
of recovery, but a low congestive inflammation of the lungs super- 
vened, and proved fatal on the 4th of July. 
7. Biographical Notice of Christopher Hansteen. By 
Alexander Buchan, Esq. 
Christopher Hansteen was bom at Christiania on the 26th of 
September 1784. In 1802 he entered the University of Copen- 
hagen as a student of law, which, however, he soon abandoned for 
what was to him the more congenial study of mathematics. He 
became mathematical tutor in the Gymnasium of Fredericksburg, 
in the Island of Zealand, in 1806, and about the same time he 
gained the prize which had been offered by the Boyal Society of 
Sciences of Copenhagen for the best essay on terrestrial magnetism. 
Shortly thereafter, viz., in 1814, he was appointed to the chair of 
astronomy in the University of Christiania, which had recently been 
founded by Frederick VI. of Norway. 
He continued to prosecute his researches into terrestrial magnet- 
ism with ardour and success, the results of which appeared in 
his great work, entitled “ Untersuchungen fiber den Magnetismus 
der Erde,” which was published in 1819 by the liberality of the 
King of Norway. The work was illustrated with an atlas of maps, 
and besides containing the fullest and best collection of observa- 
tions on terrestrial magnetism which had then appeared, if was 
remarkable for great breadth of treatment and sound philosophical 
generalisations. 
In continuing the prosecution of his physical researches, he 
made a journey into Siberia, accompanied by Ermann and Due, the 
expenses of the expedition being defrayed by the Norwegian 
