INTRODUCTION AND RESULTS. 
239 
military duty might be obtained, I applied in 1839 to the respected Chairman of the 
Hudson’s Bay Company, Sir John Pelly, Bart., and received from him the assurance 
that a conveyance in the Company’s boats from Montreal to York Factory, and back 
to Canada by a different route, would readily be granted me on my personal applica- 
tion ; and I accordingly commenced the preparation of the instruments which I 
proposed to employ. The execution of this design was prevented by the appointment 
in that year of officers and detachments of the Royal Artillery to conduct the Colonial 
magnetic observatories : these were placed under my superintendence, and the pub- 
lication of the observations made at them entrusted to me. The project of a North 
American magnetic survey, however, was not suffered to drop. 
Having ascertained from Sir John Pelly that a conveyance in the Company’s 
boats would be granted to an officer of the magnetic observatory at Toronto, on a 
representation from the President and Council of the Royal Society of the scientific 
interest attached to the undertaking, the late Lord Vivian, then Master-General of 
the Ordnance, — always desirous to encourage the officers who had the honour to serve 
under his command in rendering, in times of peace, such public though not strictly 
professional services as their public education qualified them to perform, — was 
pleased to annex the survey in question to the duties of the Toronto Observatory, and 
to add for that purpose an officer and a non-commissioned officer to the establishment 
of the observatory. This addition was proposed to Lord Vivian, with the concur- 
rence and approval of the Deputy Adjutant-General of the Royal Artillery, Major- 
General Sir Hew Dalrymple Ross, K.C.B. ; and on Lord Vivian’s recommendation, 
the Treasury granted extra pay to the officer and the non-commissioned officer, with 
ISO/, for the purchase of instruments, and 50 /. a year for three years for the contin- 
gencies of the survey. 
On the proposal of Sir John Herschel, Bart., Chairman of the Committee of Physics 
of the Royal Society, the President and Council of that body addressed the Hudson’s 
Bay Company in recommendation of the proposed undertaking, and received a 
favourable reply. 
In the autumn of 1842, Lieut, (since Captain) Lefroy, of the Royal Artillery, who 
had been the director of the magnetic observatory at St. Helena, and was appointed 
to the Toronto Observatory with a special view to his employment on the survey, left 
England for America, accompanied by Bombardier (since Sergeant) Henry of the 
same corps, to join the brigade of canoes of the Hudson’s Bay Company, which 
would leave Montreal early in the following spring; the interval was employed in 
the preparation and trial of instruments, and in connecting, by an excursion in the 
United States, the observations about to be made in the British territories, with 
those which were in progress in different parts of the Union. 
In January 1843 I waited on Sir George Simpson, by appointment, at the Hudson’s 
Bay House, to arrange with him the route by which it would be convenient to the 
Hudson’s Bay Company to convey Lieut. Lefroy, so as to enable him to fulfil the 
objects of his employment. It was proposed by Sir George Simpson that Lieut. 
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