Page:Scientific Memoirs, Vol. 2 (1841).djvu/34

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GAUSS AND WEBER ON TERRESTRIAL MAGNETISM.

ment, were made at the appointed terms, in the years 1829 and 1830, in Berlin, Freiberg, St. Petersburg, Kasan, and Nicolajef, together with the graphical representations of three of them.

In the Göttingen magnetic observatory, which was built in the year 1833, and in which the magnetic apparatus is entirely different in construction from any previously employed, these term-observations were made for the first time on the 20th and 21st of March, 1834; corresponding observations were made in Berin; but at Göttingen the observations were made every ten minutes, and in Berlin only every hour. Those at Berlin exhibited several considerable movements, which were found also in the Göttingen observations; while these latter exhibited in the intervening times a great number of movements which, of course, were entirely wanting in those made at Berlin. The question, whether the greater part of the fluctuations observed in Göttingen had been merely local, remained therefore still undecided.

The following term of the 4th and 5th of May, 1834, brought with it the decision. The intervening periods were more limited, the observations being made every five minutes, which gave to the results a considerably more definite character. No corresponding observations with Gambey's apparatus during this term, or in any subsequent ones, have been published. On the other hand, M. Sartorius, who had taken an active part in the March term-observations at Göttingen, and who, being on the point of undertaking a journey of several years to Italy, had provided himself with an apparatus similar to the one at Göttingen, but of smaller dimensions, made with it careful and complete observations, at short intervals, during the May term, at Waltershausen, in Bavaria, about twenty German miles from Göttingen. A concordance surprisingly great was manifested, not only in the larger, but even in almost all the smaller oscillations, so that in fact nothing remained which could be justly ascribed to local causes.

During the three following terms, i. e. in June, August, and September, 1834, the observations were continued at Göttingen in exactly the same way; and the number of observers at other places, with apparatus either the same or of similar construction, was continually on the increase. Professor Encke, having become acquainted, from personal inspection, with the arrangements in Göttingen, ordered provisionally a similar apparatus of