MAGNETIC DECLINATION AT KEW AND NEKTSCHINSK. 
229 
The variations in the proportional magnitude of the disturbances in different localities, 
even when the similarity was otherwise unequivocal, had in one respect the appearance 
of a systematic indication, a decrease being shown in the energy of the disturbing force 
as its action was traced and followed from north to south. Hence the probability was 
inferred (so far as it might be safe to draw such conclusions from experiments which 
embraced comparatively but a small portion of the earth’s surface) that the great focus or 
foci from whence the most powerful disturbances in the northern hemisphere emanated 
might be situated, and might possibly be sought with success, in parts of the globe to 
the north, or to the north-west, of the European continent. But even admitting this 
supposition to be well founded, so many of the phenomena still remained unexplained, 
that in the ‘Besultate’ for 1836, p. 99, M. Gauss took occasion to express his matured 
conviction that “we are compelled to admit that on the same day and at the same 
hour various forces are contemporaneously in action, which are probably quite inde- 
pendent of one another and have very different sources, and that the effects of these 
various forces are intermixed in very dissimilar proportions at various places of observa- 
tion relatively to the position and distance of these latter ; or these effects may pass one 
into the other, one beginning to act before the other has ceased. The disentanglement 
of the complications which thus occur in the phenomena at every individual station will 
undoubtedly prove very difficult. Nevertheless we may confidently hope that these diffi- 
culties will not always remain insuperable, when the simultaneous observations shall be 
much more widely extended. It will be a triumph of science should we at some future 
time succeed in arranging the manifold intricacies of the phenomena, in separating the 
individual forces of which they are the compound result, and in assigning the source 
and measure of each.” 
The term-days of the Gottingen Association were limited to the observation of a single 
element, viz. the declination, with the exception of a few stations at which the bifilar 
magnetometer was occasionally employed. Instrumental means had not as yet been 
devised for observing the disturbances of the inclination and the total magnetic force, 
either directly, or by means of their theoretical equivalents, the horizontal and vertical 
components of the force. We find it indeed expressly admitted by M. Gauss that it 
could not be doubted that the Inclination and Force are subject to disturbances similar 
to those observed in the Declination, but that the time had not yet arrived for including 
the three elements in the circle of combined inquiry : adding, “ that as soon as the 
means of observation should be so far perfected that we could recognize with certainty, 
follow with ease, and measure with accuracy the variations, and especially the rapidly 
varying changes of the dip and total force, these variations would have the same claim 
on the united activity of inquirers, as the variations of the declination possessed during 
the period of the Gottingen Association.” 
We come now to the epoch when the inquiry was taken up and its further prosecu- 
tion carried on by our own country. The two German Associations had prepared the 
way for the more extended and more complete organization which, on the recommenda- 
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