electric discharge takes place, or of the substances between which the spark travels, is altogether precluded.
It was supposed after the total solar eclipse of 1869 that the spectrum of the sun’s corona exhibited the same bright lines as the aurora. But recent observations show that the coincidence is not so close as had been supposed, and, in fact, there is no evidence to show that the lines are the same.
(From Fraser’s Magazine, February 1870.)
THE EARTH A MAGNET.
There is a very prevalent but erroneous opinion that the magnetic needle points to the north. I remember well how I discovered in my boyhood that the needle does not point to the north, for the discovery was impressed upon me in a very unpleasant manner. I had purchased a pocket-compass, and was very anxious—not, indeed, to test the instrument, since I placed implicit reliance upon its indications—but to make use of it as a guide across unknown regions. Not many miles from where I lived lay Cobham Wood, no very extensive forest certainly, but large enough to lose oneself in. Thither, accordingly, I proceeded with three schoolfellows. When we had lost ourselves, we gleefully called the compass into action, and made from the wood in a direction which we supposed would lead us home. We travelled on with full confidence in our pocket guide; at each turning we consulted it in an artistic manner, carefully poising it and waiting till its vibrations ceased. But when we had travelled some two or three miles without seeing any house or road that we recognised, matters assumed a less cheerful aspect. We were unwilling to compromise our dignity as ‘explorers’ by asking the way—a proceeding which no precedent in the history of our favourite travellers allowed us to think of. But evening came on, and with it a summer thunder-storm. We were getting thoroughly tired out, and the hæc olim meminisse juvabit with which we had been comforting ourselves began to lose its force. When at length we yielded, we learned that we had gone many miles out of our road, and we did not reach home till several hours after dark. Also the offending compass was confiscated by justly indignant parents, so that for a long while the cause of our troubles was a mystery to us. In reality, instead of pointing due north, the compass pointed more than 20° towards the west, or nearly to the quarter called by sailors north-north-west. No wonder, therefore, that we went astray when we followed a guide so untrustworthy.
The peculiarity that the magnet needle does not, in general, point to the north, is the first of a series of peculiarities which I now propose briefly to describe. The irregularity is called by sailors the needle’s variation, but the term more commonly used by scientific men is the declination of the needle. It was probably discovered a long time ago, for 800 years before our era the Chinese applied the magnet’s directive force to guide them in journeying over the great Asiatic plains, and they must soon have detected so marked a peculiarity. Instead of a ship’s compass, they made use of a magnetic car, on the front of which a floating needle carried a small figure, whose outstretched arm pointed southwards. We have no record, however, of their discovery of the declination, and know only that they were acquainted with it in the twelfth century. The declination was discovered, independently, by European observers in the thirteenth century.
As we travel from place to place, the declination of the needle is found to vary. Christopher Columbus was the first to detect this. He discovered it on the 13th of September, 1492, during his first voyage, and when he was six hundred miles from Ferro, the most westerly of the Canary Islands. He found that the declination, which was towards the east in Europe, passed to the west, and increased continually as he travelled westwards.
But here we see the first trace of a yet more singular peculiarity. I have said that at present the declination is towards the west in Europe. In Columbus’s time it was towards the east. Thus we learn that the declination varies with the progress of time, as well as with change of place.
The genius of modern science is a weighing and a measuring one. Men are not satisfied nowadays with knowing that a peculiarity exists; they seek to determine its extent, how far it is variable—whether from time to time or from place to place, and so on. Now the results of such inquiries applied to the magnetic declination have proved exceedingly interesting.
We find, first, that the world may be divided into two unequal portions, over one of which the needle has a westerly, and over the other an easterly, declination. Along the boundary line, of course, the needle points due north. England is situated in the region of westerly magnets. This region includes all Europe, except the north-eastern parts of Russia; Turkey, Arabia, and the whole of Africa; the greater part of the Indian Ocean, and the western parts of Australia; nearly the whole of the Atlantic Ocean; Greenland, the eastern parts of Canada, and a small slice from the north-eastern part of Brazil. All these form one region of westerly declination; but, singularly enough, there lies in the very heart of the remaining and larger region of easterly magnets an oval space of a contrary character. This space includes the Japanese Islands, Manchouria, and the eastern parts of China. It is very noteworthy also, that in the westerly region the declination is much greater than in the easterly. Over the whole of Asia, for instance, the needle points almost due north. On the contrary, in the north of Greenland and of Baffin’s Bay, the magnetic needle points due west; while still further to the north (a little westerly), we find the needle pointing with its north end directly towards the south.
In the presence of these peculiarities, it would be pleasant to speculate. We might imagine the existence of powerfully magnetic veins in the earth’s solid mass, coercing the magnetic needle from a full obedience to the true polar summons. Or the comparative effects of oceans and of continents might be called into play. But unfortunately for all this, we have to reconcile views founded on fixed relations presented by the earth with the process of change indicated above. Let us consider the declination in England alone.
In the fifteenth century there was an easterly declination. This gradually diminished, so that in about the year 1657 the needle pointed due north. After this the needle pointed towards the west, and continually more and more, so that scientific men, having had experience only of a continual shifting of the needle in one direction, began to form the opinion that this change would continue, so that the needle would pass, through north-west and west, to the south. In fact, it was imagined that the motion of the needle would resemble that of the hands of a watch, only in a reversed direction. But before long observant men detected a gradual diminution in the needle’s westerly motion. Arago, the distinguished French astronomer and physicist, was the first (I believe) to point out that ‘the progressive movement of the magnetic needle towards the west appeared to have become continually slower of late years’ (he wrote in 1814), ‘which seemed to indicate that after some little time longer it might become retrograde.’ Three years later, namely, on the 10th of February, 1817, Arago asserted definitively that the retrograde movement of the magnetic needle had commenced to be perceptible. Colonel Beaufoy at first oppugned Arago’s conclusion, for he found from observations made in London, during the years 1817–1819, that the westerly motion still continued. But he had omitted to take notice of the circumstance, that London and Paris are two different places. A few years later the retrograde motion became perceptible at London also, and it has now been established by the observations of forty years. It appears, from a careful comparison of Beaufoy’s observations, that the needle reached the limit of its western digression (at Greenwich) in March 1819, at which time the declination was very nearly 25°. In Paris, on the contrary, the needle had reached its greatest western digression (about 22½°) in 1814. It is rather singular that although at Paris the retrograde motion thus presented itself five years earlier than in London, the needle pointed due north at Paris six years later than in London, viz., in 1663. Perhaps the greater amplitude of the needle’s London digression may explain this peculiarity.
‘It was already sufficiently difficult,’ says Arago, ‘to imagine what could be the kind of change in the constitution of the globe which
