Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/860

838 magnetic force than is in general assigned to it? May not that which has long been allowed to rank among the most extensively diffused of Nature's agents find a home in each individual member of the solar system, causing them to act and react upon each other as well by their magnetic energy as by the force of gravity? The perfect solution of such a problem would well repay many a year of persevering observation and of assiduous study, and well will those be rewarded by whose labor the general cause of terrestrial magnetism ceases to be one of the unsolved mysteries of cosmical physics."

In connection with the eclipse of December 22, 1870, Father Perry was made chief of the expedition to watch the phenomenon at Cadiz, Spain. Unfavorable weather prevailing during most of the time of the sojourn of the party at the station, the observers were spread out as much as possible, in hopes of not failing altogether, and the results justified expectations. The clouds were not so thick as to cut off all the observations, and some fairly good views were obtained.

For the observation of the transit of Venus of 1874 Father Perry offered his services for the expedition to Kerguelen Island, and was appointed chief of the observing party, to be stationed at Christmas Harbor. Importance was attached to this expedition in British scientific circles aside from its astronomical purposes, because this lonely "island of desolation," as Father Perry afterward called it, had been but little explored, and not much was known of the region in which it was situated; and a natural history party was sent out with the transit company by the Royal Society to investigate the botany, etc., of the island. The undertaking to go on this voyage was a serious adventure with Father Perry, and illustrates as much as anything else, perhaps, his self-sacrificing devotion to his favorite science. He was peculiarly sensitive to suffering from seasickness, and was not spared on this, one of the longest and roughest voyages the ocean affords; and his sufferings on this occasion. Nature says, "were so fearful that every one wondered that he cared to venture on even the most promising trip." His patience in suffering "helped to win for him the esteem of the officers with whom he came in contact. Not one word of his discomfort is to be found in any of the journals kept by him." He was guided, as he expressed it, by a determination "that no consideration should make us flinch where the astronomical interests of the expedition were at stake." In addition to the work of the expedition, he took magnetic observations at the Cape of Good Hope, Kerguelen, Bombay, Aden, Port Said, Malta, Palermo, Rome, Naples, Florence, and Moncalieri, and lectured on the transit of Venus at the Cape and Bombay, and, on his return, at the Royal Institution. He also