94 
ME. C. V. WALKEE ON MAONETIC STOEMS AND EAETH-CUEEENTS. 
various quarters of the globe, of auroral manifestations, disturbed magnetometers, and 
earth-currents in telegraph wires, of which latter more than one case is mentioned in 
which the ordinary telegrams were transmitted by aid of the electricity thus presented 
to the wires. 
In his ‘ Archives des Sciences Physiques,’ are two articles by Professor A. De la Rive 
on this same disturbance (tom. vi. Nouvelle periode, pp. 49 to 59, and 275 to 288, 
being in the Numbers 21 and 23, issued respectively on September 20 and November 
20, 1859). M. De la Rive has availed himself of the phenomena recorded on these 
days in further illustration of his electrical theory of the Aurora, which will be fomid in 
detail in the third volume of his ‘Treatise on Electricity,’ p. 283, English Translation. 
In looking over the records collected by Professor Loomis, and those which had been 
supplied to M. De la Rive, it was plain that we, who have the direction of systems of 
electric telegraph, had, to a certain extent, failed in our duty. For myself, I had, it is 
true, received week by week certain returns from a few places in the district under my 
charge ; but they had neither been discussed nor published ; so that when M. De la Rive 
stated in reference to certain Paris observations, “ Malheur eusement le sens des cou- 
rants transmis par les fils telegraphiques n’a pas pu etre indique exactement ” {op. cit. 
p. 57), I took the matter up more actively, the more so as he was under a misapprehen- 
sion (to which I shall refer presently) for lack of information. 
The net of telegraph wires upon which my observations have been made, occupies 
the south-eastern portion of England. The wires are spread over the counties of Kent, 
Surrey, Sussex, and Berkshire. In a general way, the district may be regarded as 
bounded on the N. by the river Thames, and on the E. and S. by the British Channel, 
the other southern counties of England being on the western side. A map of this por- 
tion of England is given (Plate II.). The district includes a large number of telegraph 
stations and other groups of telegraphs, in addition to those which are set out on the map. 
I have selected various telegraph terminal stations, and taken them in pairs, not giving, 
as they are not necessary to our purpose, any of the intermediate stations ; and have re- 
garded the two stations of each pair as connected by a direct line. It will be evident at 
a glance that I am in possession of lines in various azimuths. There are eighteen selected 
lines in all, and each is in a different azimuth. A few more could have been found ; but 
as they occupy only intermediate places, and connect stations where observations cannot 
conveniently be made, they are rejected. It will be seen that the railway routes between 
any two stations (and they are also the routes of the telegraph wires) are often derious, 
while the lines which are to form the basis of this inquiry are direct. In approaching 
the subject, I take it that a cui’rent or drift or flood of electricity is passing at a given 
time and in a given direction through the mass of the earth. Our telegraph wires pene- 
trate the earth at then.- respective terminations, probing or sounding, as it were, into this 
then pervading stream of electricity. They penetrate by the aid of the gag-pipes and water- 
pipes in towns, by pumps and wells in country places, occasionally by a plate of copper 
sunk deep in the wet soil, and very frequently by the metals themselves of the railway. 
