Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c10.23

c10.23

The opportunity of making observations of the dip, and variation of the compass might have then utility not only in correcting the surveys, but in discovering the theory of magnetism: that the theory has not yet been discovered is in my opinion owing to a want of observations: It is not easy to know conclusions by induction without a sufficiency of facts, and yet I do not know that in the whole space from India to the frozen ocean, nor from Persia to Kamchatka there has yet been made a single observation, except that at Tobolski by De La Chappe..., and therefore a journey to Benares would also be useful in this matter.