Page:A Voyage of Discovery and Research in the Southern and Antarctic Regions Vol 1.djvu/20

xii are no doubt intimately connected with the general causes of terrestrial magnetism, and will probably lead us to a much more perfect knowledge of those causes than we now possess.

"Actuated by these impressions, on the occasion of a letter addressed by Baron von Humboldt to His Royal Highness the Duke of Sussex, P.R.S., the Council of this Society, on April 13. 1837, resolved to apply to Government for aid in prosecuting, in conjunction with the German Magnetic Association, a series of simultaneous observations; and in consequence of an application founded on such their resolution, a grant of money was obtained for the purchase of instruments for that purpose. By reason, however, of the details and manipulations of the methods then recently introduced into magnetic observations by Gauss being at that time neither completely perfected, nor their superiority over the old methods fully established by general practice, the precise apparatus to be employed in these operations was not at the time agreed upon, and was still under discussion, subject to the report of the Astronomer Royal on the performance of an instrument on Gauss's principle established at Greenwich, at the time when the subject in its present more extended form was referred by the Council to this Joint Committee, so that the grant in question has not, in point of fact, been employed or called for. The Committee consider this as in some respects fortunate, as in