Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/125

Rh needle, and by another series of observations established the connection between certain perturbations of the terrestrial magnetism and the aurora borealis. With Prof. Courtenay he investigated the magnetic dip at various places in the United States, and with Mr. Espy made a minute survey of part of the track of a tornado which visited New Jersey, June 19, 1835.

After Stephen Girard died, in 1833, Prof. Bache was elected one of the trustees of the College for Orphans, founded by the will of the childless merchant. Three years later the trustees decided to select a president for the institution, in order that he might go abroad and study European methods of education while other preparations were being made. Prof. Bache, then only thirty years of age, was selected for the position. Although regretting the consequent interruption of his scientific researches, in which he had become much absorbed, he accepted the appointment, and departed on his mission, September 30, 1836. Two years were spent agreeably and profitably in Europe, and on his return Prof. Bache made a report to the trustees embodying his observations on the schools of England, France, Prussia, Austria, Switzerland, and Italy, with the many helpful conclusions and suggestions that he had derived from these data. The document was printed, making a large octavo volume.

As the preparations for opening the college were not yet complete. Prof. Bache offered his services gratuitously to reorganize the public schools of Philadelphia, and his offer was gladly accepted by the municipal authorities. A year later, finding that the trustees of the college were still unprepared to open the institution, he relinquished the salary of his office and accepted from the city a much smaller compensation for his time. His work on the public schools was completed in 1842, and resulted in a system that has been taken as a model by other cities in various parts of the United States. So highly were his labors appreciated that the Central High School was frequently called Bache Institute.

Girard College having made very little progress, he now resigned all connection with it, and accepted his former chair at the University of Pennsylvania, with its welcome opportunities for scientific research. The preceding six years had by no means been a blank with respect to his favorite investigations.' When he went to Europe he took care to provide himself with a set of portable instruments, with which, as a relief from the labors imposed by the special object of his mission, he made a connected series of observations on the dip and intensity of terrestrial magnetism at important places on the Continent and in Great Britain.

After his return to Philadelphia he co-operated in the undertaking of the British Association to determine by contemporaneous observations at widely separated points the fluctuations of