Page:A Voyage of Discovery and Research in the Southern and Antarctic Regions Vol 1.djvu/43

Rh of antarctic exploration, many hitherto undiscovered points of land will be encountered, each of which will, of course, become available as a magnetic station, according to its accessibility and convenience.

There are certain points in the regions about to be traversed in this voyage which offer great and especial interest in a magnetic point of view. These are, first, the south magnetic pole (or poles), intending thereby the point or points in which the horizontal intensity vanishes and the needle tends vertically downwards; and secondly, the points of maximum intensity, which, to prevent the confusion arising from a double use of the word poles, we may provisionally term magnetic foci.

It is not to be supposed that Captain Ross, having already signalised himself by attaining the northern magnetic pole, should require any exhortation to induce him to use his endeavours to reach the southern. On the contrary, it might better become us to suggest for his consideration, that no scientific datum of this description, nor any attempt to attain very high southern latitudes, can be deemed important enough to be made a ground for exposing to extraordinary risk the lives of brave and valuable men. The magnetic pole, though not attained, will yet be pointed to by distinct and unequivocal indications; viz. by the approximation of the dip to 90°; and by the convergence of the magnetic meridians on all sides towards it. If such convergence be observed over any considerable region, the place of the pole may thence be deduced, though its locality may be inaccessible.

M. Gauss, from theoretical considerations, has recently assigned a probable position in Ion. 146° E., lat. 66° S. to the southern magnetic pole, denying the existence of two poles of the same name, in either hemisphere, which, as he justly remarks, would entail the necessity of admitting also a third point, having some of the chief characters of such a pole intermediate between them. That this is so may be made obvious without following out his somewhat intricate demonstration, by simply considering, that if a needle be transported from one such pole to another of the same name, it will begin to deviate from perpendicularity towards the pole it has quitted, and will end in attaining perpendicularity again, after pointing in the latter part of its progress obliquely towards the pole to which it