'Transactions of the Bombay Geographical Society, from September 1850 to June 1852. Edited by the Secretary. Volume X.' [‎55] (76/458)

ZANZIBAR OBSERVATIONS.
Iv
mentary instructions. He seemed a very intelligent man, and most anxious to promote the
views of the Society, with which he had not on leaving Bombay in 1849 been made acquainted.
The singular anomalies established by the St. Helena observatory rendered observations to the
westward and near the line of the greatest possible interest : and the steps latterly taken by the
Board of Ordnance, with which the East India Company had promised to co-operate, afforded
an additional stimulus to exertion amongst meteorologists in the East. Mr. George’s services
would, as matters now stand, be of very great value, especially were a tide-gauge established at
Zanzibar: it would at the same time be of much advantage could the Imaum be induced to em
ploy such a man as Mr. Leech, if only for a single year, to complete the enquiry. In the
course of the year various of the fragmentary notices laid from time to time before the Society
had been put in the form of regular papers, or portions of papers, and been accepted elsewhere :
the notices of Luminous Meteors and of Hailstorms in India had been so dealt with, and the
results appeared in the Transactions of the British Association for 1850. Various extracts from
the report of the last year had been copied into various of the scientific periodicals at home :
copies of the diagrams on the walls of the rooms of the Society had been printed in the London
Philosophical Transactions, with full acknowledgments of this and other services. The subject
of their experiments on the Aneroid had been examined by Sir John Herschell, who expressed
himself in complimentary terms on what had been submitted to him: and it appeared as a paper
in the last number of the Transactions of the Royal Geographical Society of London. The
notice of a probable descent and upheaval of the Earth, as manifested by our littoral formations
in last year s report, formed subject of papers in the Bengal Asiatic Journal, and an article in
the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal. It had been the means of affording so large an amount of
additional information on this class of phenomen that it was expected to be taken up before
the Ipswich meeting of the British Association. Sir Charles Lyell had written that he had
just received their Iransactions in time to cite them on a chapter on the Salifera new red or
trias He adds “ Your account of the Red Sea case makes me curious to know the depth
of it and of the Straits of Babelmandeb,—the density of the lower strata of water, and the
existence or not of an under current; if there is none, there must be some way of relief by
deposition.- On these points he had been duly replied to He (the Secretary) had on vari
ous previous occasions laid before them acknowledgments from men of science at home of
the assistance afforded by the Society forwarding them information—transmitting them um
published papers, or sheets of others still at press : a body which could perform all these tasks
efficiently, and pour its contribution of oil, however small, into the lamp of science, seemed to
ein a great measure fulfilling the most important of the objects of its existence. The whole
of the instruments received by two several despatches had been disposed of, and others asked
for they could not supply. On these points the Society would be duly informed by Mr
Patton on his return to the presidency The name given to each of the three divisions of the territory of the East India Company, and later the British Raj, on the Indian subcontinent. ; but he (the Secretary) believed that in no single
. e P artrnent of exertion had they done more to encrease our stock of knowledge than in
m ucing gentlemen amateurs to assist in such researches if provided with the means to collect
information for them. At some twenty different stations had the means of making observa-
ions which would not otherwise in all likelihood have been made, been in this way provided
^ and that without pecuniary charge to the Society : the labour, which was considerable]
that^^w^^hjn^d Th61>resi ^ ent said ’ an( * the S° ciet y seemed fully to concur in his views,
. th . f 6y W ° Uld continu0 as hitherto to assist in this matter, where so much
by w^ °* assis t a nce of the sort afforded was required, and such ample fruits were secured