LATELY PUBLISHED.

A TREATISE ON THE LAW AND PRACTICE OF NAVAL COURTS MARTIAL, for the guidance of Naval Officers. By WILLIAM HICKMAN, R.N., late Secretary to Commodore Sir Charles Hotham, K.C.B. 8vo. 10s. 6d.

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THE HURRICANE GUIDE; an attempt to connect the Rotatory Gale, or Revolving Storm, with Atmospheric Waves. Including Instructions for observing the Phenomena of the Waves and Storms; with Practical Directions for avoiding the Centres of the latter. By W. R. BIRT. With Circles on Cards. Post 8vo. 3s.

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MEMORANDUM

BY THE LORDS COMMISSIONERS OF THE ADMIRALTY, Relative to the Compilation of a Manual of Scientific Enquiry, for the use of Her Majesty's Navy.

It is the opinion of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty that it would be to the honour and advantage of the Navy, and conduce to the general interests of Science, if new facilities and encouragement were given to the collection of information upon scientific subjects by the officers, and more particularly by the medical officers, of Her Majesty's Navy, when upon foreign service; and their Lordships are desirous that for this purpose a Manual be compiled, giving general instructions for observation and for record in various branches of science. Their Lordships do not consider it necessary that this Manual should be one of very deep and abstruse research. Its directions should not require the use of nice apparatus and instruments: they should be generally plain, so that men merely of good intelligence and fair acquirement may be able to act upon them; yet, in pointing out objects, and methods of observation and record, they might still serve as a guide to officers of high attainment: and it will be for their Lordships to consider whether some pecuniary reward or promotion may not be given to those who succeed in producing eminently useful results.

Their Lordships are aware that in the instructions prepared under the directions of the Royal Society for the Antarctic expedition -in the hints for collecting information given to officers on the expedition to China; in the excellent book by A. Jackson, entitled "What to observe;" and in other documents and publications-the fullest directions are to be found; but they are either more voluminous or more closely confined to objects which regard particular localities than is to be desired for a general Manual. Their Lordships are, therefore, desirous that a new compilation should be made, and are satisfied that their wishes would be best met

if they could obtain the assistance of some of our most eminent men of Science in the composing, by each, of a plain and concise chapter upon the head of enquiry with which he might be most conversant; and they have been readily and kindly promised the advice and labour of Sir John Herschel in revising the whole and preparing it for publication. The several heads of enquiry are as follows:

Independently of matters of exact science, their Lordships would look, in many instances, for Reports upon National Character and Customs, Religious Ceremonies, Agriculture and Mechanical Arts, Language, Navigation, Medicine, Tokens of value, and other subjects; but for these only very general instructions can be given, though valuable Reports may be expected from men of observation and intelligence acting under the encouragement which the notice of whatever is well and usefully done is certain of affording.

It would give additional value to each chapter if the name of him by whom it might be composed should be affixed to it; and their Lordships are anxious that no time be lost in the preparation of this work. They are sending a surveying vessel to New Zealand, and have others in the Torres Straits and in other parts of the world. A new establishment is contemplated at Borneo. Expeditions are proposed in search of Sir John Franklin. They have cruisers in every sea; and where the ships of the navy are not present, it sometimes happens that the vessels of the merchant are conducted with much intelligence and enterprise, and for all of these the work proposed would be valuable.

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PREFACE.

THE Memorandum of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, prefixed to the present work, so fully explains its origin and object, that it only remains for the Editor to indicate the reasons which have necessitated what may appear to be in a certain degree departures from the plan as therein sketched outdepartures either inevitable in themselves, or sanctioned in their progress by their Lordships' approbation, and which, though involving a material increase in the bulk of the volume beyond what was in the first instance contemplated, can hardly fail to be regarded as adding still more materially to the probability of its proving useful in furthering the collection of scientific information.

On receiving from the eminent authors of the several chapters into which this work is divided, their respective contributions, drawn up by them at the particular and personal request of the late lamented

Earl of Auckland (to whose enlightened zeal for the improvement of science the work owes its original conception), the Editor at once perceived that, while, on the one hand, the total amount of matter contributed could by no possibility be compressed into the small compass originally intended (even when reduced by the retrenchment of some portions in his opinion less vitally essential, and which the authors of those portions, on his representation, most readily agreed to abbreviate)-on the other, those contributions bore evidence of having been drawn up with so much care and precision, and elaborated with such consummate ability, that any further attempt to reduce them within those limits would have been at once presumptuous on his part and most injurious to the efficiency of the work itself.

It is hoped and believed that the instructions on each subject treated of are such as completely to fulfil the views of the Memorandum, in so far as it is possible, consistently with the nature of the sciences treated of, that they should do so. But there are some such as Terrestrial Magnetism-which it is impossible to divest of a certain degree of abstruseness, and in which no observations worth recording can be made without the aid of instruments and methods of observation and reduction decidedly both nice and delicate. The same may be said, so far as the instru