266 
GENERAL SIR EDWARD SABINE ON TERRESTRIAL MAGNETISM. 
British Association had participated in the early interest which had originated at the 
Meetings of the Association, visited and observed at twenty-four stations, chiefly in the 
north of England. In the same summer Mr. Fox observed at twenty stations in the 
north of England and south of Scotland ; and in the summer of 1838 at eight additional 
stations in the south of England. In the same years (1837 and 1838) Captain James 
Ross employed himself almost unremittingly in magnetic observation, visiting for the 
purpose fifty-eight stations, extending over England, Ireland, and Scotland generally; 
whilst in the same years (1837 and 1838) my own observations comprehended twenty- 
two stations, distributed for the most part round the coast of England and Wales, and 
extending into Ireland and Scotland, so as to effect a more perfect connexion of the 
different Lines. A general provisional account of the results which had been thus 
obtained was drawn up by myself at the request of my colleagues, and was printed in 
1839 in the 7th volume of the Reports of the British Association. 
In the year 1856, twenty years having elapsed since the proceedings which have been 
thus referred to, the General Committee of the British Association deemed it expedient 
that the Survey should be resumed, partly with a view of adding other stations to those 
which had been included in the earlier operations, and partly for the purpose of repeat- 
ing the observations at some of the earlier stations, with the view of examining the 
amounts of secular change which might appear to have taken place in the interval. The 
five persons who had taken part in the operations of 1835-38 were requested by the 
General Committee to continue their services, with the addition of Mr. John Welsh, 
Superintendent of the Magnetic Establishment at Kew. I was not myself present at the 
Cheltenham Meeting of the British Association in 1856 when the resolution was passed, 
requesting that a repetition of the survey of 1837 should be made by the same persons 
by whom the earlier survey had been accomplished ; but on my return to England 
in 1856, finding my own name standing first in the list of the Committee by whom the 
work was to be accomplished, I lost no time in proposing to my colleagues such arrange- 
ments as seemed suitable for the accomplishment of the object which the Association had 
in view. The survey of the Scottish portion of the British Islands was entrusted to the 
very able hands of Mr. Welsh : who, in the summer and autumn of 1857, determined the 
Magnetic Elements at several stations in the Interior and on the East Coast of Scotland ; 
and in the same season of the following year, extended the Survey to the West Coast, 
the Hebrides, and the Orkney and Shetland Islands. This work was performed with all 
Mr. Welsh’s wonted accuracy and completeness; and with a devotion which was but 
too great, for the exposure to inclement weather acting on a previous delicacy of health 
proved the immediate occasion of the illness which at last terminated fatally. Science 
lost in him not only a zealous and accomplished worker, but one of rare gifts and qua- 
lities, affording yet higher promise of usefulness, if his had been a prolonged life. A 
provisional account of the results of Mr. Welsh’s operations, drawn up by Mr. Balfour 
Stewart, his successor in the superintendence of the Magnetic Observatory at Kew, was 
printed in the Report of the Aberdeen Meeting of the British Association in 1859. 
