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XVI. A Comparison of Barometrical Measurement , with the 
Trigonometrical Determination of a Height at Spitsbergen. 
By Captain Edward Sabine, of the Royal Regiment of 
Artillery , F. R. S . 
Dated from Spitzbergen , July 24, 1823. 
Read May 6 , 1824. 
The hill selected for the comparative measurement was, as 
far as could be judged, the highest, within convenient dis- 
tance, of which the ascent was practicable, being rather above 
the general height of the hills on the western part of the 
north coast of Spitzbergen ; the summit was distant less than 
two miles from the Observatory on the Inner Norway Island, 
in a direction very nearly due south, as the mark, which was 
placed to determine the point of measurement, was within 
the field of the meridian transit instrument : the hill was 
situated on the main land, and was divided from the island on 
which the Observatory was established, by a sea channel of 
little more than a mile across, making part of the harbour of 
Fair-haven. The annexed sketch of the harbour and of the ad- 
jacent coast will be sufficient to point out the positions of the 
hill and of the Observatory, and is the more necessary, as 
the plan of Fair-haven, published in Captain Phipps’s Voyage, 
( in which an endeavour might otherwise be made to trace 
them, ) is so exceedingly inaccurate though purporting to be 
from actual survey, that after having been nearly three 
weeks on the spot, I am even more perplexed than on the 
