drawn up at our especial request, and containing the several objects of scientific inquiry recommended to your attention by that body, you will follow their suggestions, and carry out their views, as far as may be in your power, consistently with the safety of Her Majesty's ships, and with the means we have placed at your disposal.
At the Cape of Good Hope the instruments and observers for the second fixed magnetic observatory are to be carefully landed; and having completed your water, and replaced the stores which you have expended, you are to proceed to the eastward, touching at Marion and Crozet Isles for observations, if the weather and other circumstances should be favourable for that purpose.
As we have provided the expedition with invariable pendulums, and all the necessary apparatus for determining the figure of the earth; and as it is desirable that these observations should be made at several points, more especially in high southern latitudes, it is probable that Kerguelen Island will be found well suited to that purpose, as well as to an extensive series of magnetic and other observations; but the selection of these stations is freely confided to your judgment.
If the operations at Kerguelen Island, or at such other places as you may select, should be completed before the end of February, 1840, you will possibly find the sea sufficiently open to proceed directly to the southward, to examine those places where indications of land have been noticed, and to make the requisite observations on any outlying islands that you may be able to discover; but, at that advanced period of the season, you are cautiously to avoid being beset in the ice, as your early arrival at Van Diemen's Land is of far greater importance to the great object of the expedition than any results you could hope there to obtain.
Should your observations at Kerguelen Island detain you beyond the above specified period, you will have an opportunity of touching at the Islands of St. Paul and
