Page:A Voyage of Discovery and Research in the Southern and Antarctic Regions Vol 1.djvu/21

Rh consequence of the delay time has been given for a much maturer consideration of the whole subject; and should it now be taken up as a matter of public concern, they consider that it will be necessary to provide for a more continuous and systematic series of observations, by observers regularly appointed for the purpose and provided with instruments and means considerably more costly than those contemplated on the occasion in question.

"On the general advisableness of calling for public assistance in the prosecution of the extensive subject of terrestrial magnetism, in both the modes referred to them for their consideration, (viz. by magnetic observatories established at several stations properly selected on land, and by a naval expedition expressly directed to such observations in the antarctic seas,) your Committee are fully agreed. They consider the subject to have now attained a degree of theoretical as well as of practical importance, and to afford a scope for the application of exact inquiry which it has never before enjoyed, and which are such as fully to justify its recommendation by the Royal Society to a revival of that national support to which we are indebted for the first chart of variations constructed by our illustrious countryman Halley in A.D. 1701, on the basis of observations collected in a voyage of discovery expressly equipped for that purpose by the British government.