scientific value of a combined effort to be made by the observers of
all nations, to obtain accurate measurements of the magnetism of the
earth; and we owe it mainly to his enthusiasm for science, his great
reputation and his wide-spread influence, that not only private men of
science, but the governments of most of the civilised nations, our own
among the number, were induced to take part in the enterprise. But
the actual working out of the scheme, and the arrangements by which
the labours of the observers were so directed as to obtain the best
results, we owe to the great mathematician Gauss, working along with
Weber, the future founder of the science of electro-magnetic
measurement, in the magnetic observatory of Gottingen, and aided by
the skill of the instrument-maker Leyser. These men, however, did not
work alone. Numbers of scientific men joined the Magnetic Union,
learned the use of the new instruments and the new methods of reducing
the observations; and in every city of Europe you might see them, at
certain stated times, sitting, each in his cold wooden shed, with his
eye fixed at the telescope, his ear attentive to the clock, and his
pencil recording in his note-book the instantaneous position of the
suspended magnet.

Bacon's conception of "Experiments in concert" was thus realised, the
scattered forces of science were converted into a regular army, and
emulation and jealousy became out of place, for the results obtained
by any one observer were of no value till they were combined with
those of the others.

The increase in the accuracy and completeness of magnetic observations
which was obtained by the new method, opened up fields of research
which were hardly suspected to exist by those whose observations of
the magnetic needle had been conducted in a more primitive manner. We