that of Toronto for three terms. At the conclusion of these terms the St. Helena observatory was discontinued, and the remaining observatories were taken over by the local governments. Lieutenant Clerk commenced his magnetic employment by a cruise in the Antarctic Seas for a magnetic survey. Lieutenant Lefroy carried out a magnetic survey of a considerable portion of the Hudson's Bay territories, and Lieutenant Eardley-Wilmot a survey of the Cape Colony. The observations made at the Ordnance and Naval Observatories have been published under the direction of Sir Edward Sabine, who has had an office for the purpose at Woolwich, which has been subsequently removed to the In NovemKew Observatory. The brief summary given above of the operations which earned for so many Artillery officers the blue riband of Science, Fellowship of the Royal Society, would establish to a great extent that which its most distinguished officers have always sought to secure for the Regiment,-a scientific reputation. But in the career of Sir Edward Sabine, so briefly alluded to, there has been one continued proof of the possibility of a soldier attaining the highest eminence in the world of science. Although personally unknown to many of his brother officers, his fame has been the pride of all; and has been felt to reflect a lustre, unprecedented in the profession, upon the Corps of which he is a member. Many readers of these pages will remember the reception given to him when, with the other Colonels-Commandant, he was persuaded during the present year to revisit the head-quarters of the Regiment. In the enthusiasm with which he was greeted by old and young, there was an unmistakable evidence of an esprit de corps, which, while admitting the claims of the scientific world at large upon their distinguished comrade, yet determined that it should be known to him that his honours were doubly dear to them because he was one of themselves. In the sketch of the Magnetic Survey of the Globe given above, there would be a great omission if it were not stated ber, 1871. how much the employment of Artillery officers in these operations was due to the previous labours and successes of Sir Edward Sabine. It was in 1817, two years after the conclusion of the war, that the first Polar Expedition was prepared. The Admiralty, to whom the preparations were entrusted, applied to the President and Council of the Royal Society to recommend a person who should be competent to conduct the researches in Physics and Natural History. General Mudge-already mentioned in this work—was then at the head of the British Trigonometrical Survey, and was a member of the Council of the Royal Society. It may be here mentioned, in passing, that in those days the Artillery and Engineers had the alternate direction of the Trigonometrical Survey, now apparently vested exclusively in the latter. Sir Edward Sabine was already favourably known, not merely to General Mudge, but also to other leading members of the Council of the Royal Society, such as Young, Kater, Wollaston, and Davy,-on account of some works which he had written, one being on the Birds of North America, in which country he had served during the war of 1812-14. After passing a severe examination, with great credit, Sir Edward Sabine's appointment to the Polar Expedition was sanctioned by Lord Mulgrave, then MasterGeneral of the Ordnance and early in 1818 he sailed in the 'Isabella,' making his first Pendulum station at Hare Island, in Baffin's Bay, in the spring of 1818. The results of his experiments, then and subsequently, appeared in the 'Philosophical Transactions,' and in a work entitled 'Pendulum and other Experiments,' published in 1825, at the cost of Government, on the recommendation of the Duke of Wellington, who had succeeded Lord Mulgrave as MasterGeneral of the Ordnance. It was Sir Edward's hope-in which, however, he was disappointed that a series of Pendulum experiments on the continental surface comprised between the high Canadian latitudes and the shores of the Mexican Sea, should also be undertaken. He has lived, however, to see the same object admirably accomplished on the continent of British India between Cape Comorin and the Higher Himalaya, under the able direction of Colonel Walker of the Royal (Indian) Engineers, and to take himself a final part in the completion of the series, at the Kew Physical Observatory, by Captain Heaviside, R.E., and the men of the Indian Engineers, employed on that service by Colonel Walker. It may be said without exaggeration that the support given by Sir Edward-as President of the Royal Society-to Colonel Walker's propositions, and the earlier experiments made by himself in the same field, have been among the highest services rendered by any man to science. Among the many Artillery officers who, since the peace of 1815, have sought to make a return to their country by their devotion to physical science, Sir Edward Sabine stands facile princeps:-and he has had the satisfaction of living to see, not merely his experiments carried to maturity, but also the inferences, which he did not hesitate to draw with confidence from his own earlier experiments, confirmed by the results of the labours of others. The results of his experiments, which claimed to be sufficiently extensive to justify the conclusion which they were held to establish of the measure of the ellipticity in the Transnorthern portion of the globe, have received an increased actions of Royal value since the published results of a similar series in the Astronosouthern hemisphere by Captain Henry Foster, from the fact Society. of their mutual agreement. These earlier services of Sir Edward Sabine supplied the ground on which the then Master-General (Lord Vivian) justified, and on which Sir Robert Peel, as head of the Government, approved, his nomination to the superintendence of the Magnetic Observatories in 1839, fourteen years after the publication by him of the work mentioned above, 'Pendulum and other Experiments.' It was while he held this appointment, that he directed the Magnetic Survey of the Globe, in which so many Artillery officers had the good fortune to take a leading part. mical |