512 THE HONGKONG GOVERNMENT GAZETTE, 17TH NOVEMBER, 1877.
five
years, after which the excess of revenue over expenditure may begin to be funded for the purchase of instruments for objects equally important to the shipping, for obtaining, if necessary, additional assistance, and for enlarging the building.
12. The kindred study to be then taken up would be Meteorology, for which would be necessary standard sets of automatic Meteorological instruments, Magnetometers, and a Photoheliograph for the daily automatic registration of sun spots, a branch which is gradually becoming the most important one of modern meteorological observatory work.
13. It would be impossible to over-estimate the practical utility and eventual value of such an establishment if in competent hands. Its work would possess not a Colonial, nor yet a British interest, but a European one, from the fact of its singular geographical position in the midst of one of the few cyclone regions of the earth, and from its favourable opportunities of bringing under systematic registration, by means of the telegraph wires from the out-ports,* phenomena occurring at the same time over wide arcas, a thing which it is not possible to achieve at the Observatory of Mauritius, in the other great cyclone region of the Eastern hemisphere, because the isolated position of that island in mid-ocean compels the Observer to rely entirely upon ships' logs, often untrustworthy, for all weather phenomena beyond his own immediate cognizance.
14. As the great central Weather Intelligence office of the Coast of China, the danger warnings of the Hongkong Observatory would have a weight and authority which those of no office at present can command, and with special reference to ships riding in exposed anchorages or flying their Blue Peters, and to all craft in an unprepared state, especially to the swarms of native junks, there is no question its predictions would be the means of saving the lives and property lost almost yearly in the typhoon season.
15. In the natural course of things, the Observatory would take over and continue automatically the work of the several Public Offices in the Colony at present engaged in Meteorological Observations, and the latter would be decidedly enhanced in value by the change in the automatic method of record and by their reduction to common averages for easy reference.
16. So far these suggestions make no mention of any instruments for special astronomical work, because such work, however interesting, would not yield to the Colony the same immediate practical return, or money value for capital sunk, that is promised by the Time-Ball or meteorological studies and Storm Signals, but in the interest of science, it may not be too much to aspire perhaps in future years to a sufficiently powerful Equatorial to join usefully in the general work of British Colonial Observatories.
17. The best site for the Observatory building would be at Kowloon on the isolated hillock known as Mount Elgin, and for the Signal Station the site most visible to the shipping would be the southernmost point of the Peninsula near the Tsim-tsa-tsui Police Station, where a tall mast could be erected with electric mechanism for detaching the Time-Ball, and with the requisite apparatus frame signalling the approaching typhoon.
I have the honour to be,
Sir.
Your obedient Servant,
The Honourable CECIL C. SMITH,
Acting Colonial Secretary.
J. M. PRICE,
Surveyor General,
The Establishment of a Time-Ball at Hongkong in an Observatory.
H. M. S. Audacious, HONGKONG, 30th October, 1877.
SIR,I am of opinion that establishing an Observatory here for registering Meteorological Observations will be of great service, especially as by its aid warnings of approaching typhoons may be distributed along the Coast. A telegraph to Manila will in this matter be of great importance.
2. It has been a matter of great surprise to me that a Time-Ball has not been established here long ago. The Coast North of Hongkong is much more nearly North and South than East and West, and to the extent to which it is so the importance of having "Greenwich Time" correct on board is greater than is the ascertaining of the Latitude correctly. I allude more particularly to ships bound from Hongkong to Shanghai running parallel to a Const thickly studded with rocks.
* There is no doubt that in the course of a few years a Subinariue Telegraph will also conneet Manila with this Station,