438 Transactions. — Chemistry and Physics. 



every telegraph office and railway -station throughout the 

 country is thus regulated frequently and uniformly to the 

 central time. 



The reasons for the selection of Wellington as the position 

 for the Observatory were strong ones. They were set forth 

 by Dr. Hector and the late Archdeacon Stock in 1868, and 

 were emphasized by Chief Surveyors J. T. Thomson and 

 Henry Jackson some three years later. On the 19th October, 

 1868, the Eev. Mr. Stock, who for about five years previously 

 had been in charge of a small time-ball observatory built by 

 the Provincial Government of Wellington on land now occu- 

 pied by the General Post Office, addressed a letter to the 

 Hon. John Hall, Postmaster-General, pointing out that the 

 site of the Observatory was no longer suitable, and urging 

 that the General Government should erect an improved 

 Observatory on a more satisfactory spot. In support of this 

 suggestion he wrote: "I need hardly say that Wellington, 

 being the centre of the telegraph system, is the best place 

 for the Observatory, which would have to use the telegraph 

 wires."* 



In a memorandum to the Hon. W. Gisborne, written on 

 the 18th of the following month, Dr. Hector endorsed the sug- 

 gestion of Mr. Stock and the reasons advanced in its favour, 

 and he proposed the site which was ultimately choseu, a knoll 

 behind the cemetery in Bolton Street. t 



Again, on the 21st September, 1871— the Observatory 

 in the meantime having been built and been doing good 

 work — Messrs. Thomson and Jackson, in a report to the 

 Government! on the subject of the longitude of the new 

 Observatory in its relation to the longitudes of certain 

 other places in the colony, said, " There will .... 

 be three points in New Zealand, extending nearly along the 

 whole length, two of which will have been referred to an 

 initial meridian at Wellington. Such being the case, and 

 actuated by the same motives which first induced us to de- 

 termine the absolute longitudes in our respective provinces, 

 w r e beg to submit for the consideration of the Government 

 that there shall be an initial meridian for the reference of all 

 longitudes in New Zealand, at Wellington, which, as its 

 capital, and from its central position, is the most eligible 

 site that could be chosen ; and that this initial meridian be 

 that of the Government Observatory." 



* Appendix to Journals of House of Representatives, D.-No. 39, 

 1870. 



t Ibid. 



{ Appendix to Journals of House of Representatives, G.-No. 23, 

 1871. 



