Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2008
1. Introduction. This Department has made extensive observations with a proton magnetometer towed behind a ship (Hill (2)). The magnetometer consists of a bottle of water surrounded by a coil of wire through which a current flows and produces a polarizing field of about 100 oersted. A small proportion of the protons in the water are polarized along the resultant field. When the current is turned off they precess about the Earth's field and produce in the coil an e.m.f. whose frequency is a measure of the field.