Page:Scientific Memoirs, Vol. 2 (1841).djvu/197

Rh The astronomer, after the comet has disappeared from his view, begins his chief employment, and resting on the laws of gravitation, calculates from the observations the elements of its true path, and is thus enabled to predict its future course. And in like manner the magnetician proposes to himself as the object of his research, as far as the different and in some respects less favourable circumstances permit,—the study of the fundamental causes which produce the phænomena, their magnitude and their mode of operation,—the subjection of the observations, as far as they extend, to those elementary principles,—and the anticipation, with some approximation at least, of their effects, in those regions where observation has not yet penetrated. It is at least well to keep in view this higher object, and to endeavour to prepare the way for it, even though the great imperfection of the data may render its attainment impossible at present.

It is not my purpose here to notice the earlier fruitless attempts to explain the enigma of these phænomena by hypotheses having no physical foundation. A physical foundation can only be allowed to such attempts as have considered the earth as a real magnet, and have employed in the calculation only the demonstrated mode of action of a magnet operating at a distance. All attempts of this nature hithert omadehitherto made [sic] have this in common;—that instead of first examining what the conditions, whether simple or complex, of this great magnet must be to satisfy the phænomena, certain determinate and simple conditions were presupposed, and the subject of inquiry has been the accordance or non-accordance of the phænomena with these presupposed conditions. We see here a repetition of what has often occurred in the early history of astronomy and of other sciences.

The simplest hypothesis of this kind is that which supposes a very small magnet in the centre of the earth; or rather (as it is not likely that any one ever believed in the actual existence of such a magnet) supposes magnetism to be so distributed in the earth, that its collective action at and beyond the surface is equivalent to the action of an imaginary infinitely small magnet; much as gravitation towards a homogeneous sphere is equivalent to the attraction of a sphere of equal mass condensed in its central point. In the supposed case, the magnetic poles are the two points where the prolonged axis of the little central magnet intersects the earth's surface; where the magnetic needle is vertical and the intensity is also greatest. In the great circle midway