The object of the expedition was to complete the survey of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego, commenced under Captain King in 1826 to 1830--to survey the shores of Chile, Peru, and of some islands in the Pacific--and to carry a chain of chronometrical measurements round the World.

Sometimes I wonder if an hour like that is real time; or is it, instead, a kind of chronometrical fairy, having no real existence on the dial, but only in essence.

It was thus when the discovery of the different expansibilities of metals by heat, gave us the means of correcting our chronometrical measurements of astronomical periods.

Observations were made during portions of three lunations of the transit of the moon's bright limb and of such tabulated stars as differed but little in right ascension and declination from the moon, in order to obtain additional data to those furnished by chronometrical comparisons with the meridian of Boston for computing the longitude of this meridian line.

The situations of the following places, which were either fixed by us or adapted from other authorities, served as the basis of the chronometrical determination of the longitudes of the intermediate parts.

Chronometrical

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Adj

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