654 Proceedings. 



courtly languages? under discussion were comparatively modern inventions. 

 Those of the Malay Archipelago savoured more of the influence of the 

 priest than of the soldier. As India shows to us, when a language out- 

 grows active life it fossilizes ; it becomes the property of the religious 

 bodies, and its more sprightly children are adopted by the people. In 

 Java this shows out plainly, where we find the original native words 

 superseded by the Sanscrit and Pali brought by the priests of Buddha, in 

 its turn overlapped by the Arabic of the Moslem. If Polynesians passed 

 through the Malay Archipelago, as they almost certainly did, they passed 

 through long before the courtly language of Java was invented, and con- 

 sequently could not have acquired it from the islanders. 



2. "On the Milk-supply of Wellington," by C. Hulke. 



Mr. Maskell said we owed a debt of gratitude to Mr. Hulke for his 

 able and interesting paper. He thought it was a matter for congratula- 

 tion that nothing worse than adulteration by pure water had been dis- 

 covered in the analyses of the various milks. He had feared that our milk 

 contained deleterious substances of various kinds. He would like to 

 know how the ordinary consumer could discover when milk was adul- 

 terated. 



Mr. C. T. Richardson said that, as the majority of young New- 

 Zealanders were brought up on cows' milk, it was certainly not beneficial 

 to them if adulterated with water. 



Mr. R. J. Barnes would like to know if it would be possible to adul- 

 terate milk with mutton or other fat, as he had heard of this being done 

 to obtain a supposed heavier cream. 



Sir James Hector said the elaborate chemical tests so ably de- 

 scribed by Mr. Hulke might be necessary for enforcing legal proceed- 

 ings, but the simple test of the proportion of cream by means of a 

 graduated tube was enough for ordinary purposes. The danger arising 

 from adding water to milk depended on possible impurity of the water 

 used. He had seen aquatic larvae of blow-flies introduced into milk in 

 this way. Low specific gravity does not always indicate bad or watered 

 milk, as the amount of nourishment in the grass at different seasons 

 greatly affects the quality, and especially the proportion of butter-fat 

 it contains. 



Mr. Hulke, in replying, stated that he had not said that the milk 

 was adulterated with pure water. The question about mutton or other 

 fats being used need not be entertained at all. Mr. Hulke wished 

 farmers, dairymen, and milkmen generally to be educated up to the fact 

 that the cow was a machine, man the manufacturer, and it depended 

 upon the goodness of the machine or the material put into it as to what 

 the manufacturer would get out of it. He would like to see a clause in 

 the Bill now before Parliament altered to read " normal-quality milk " 

 instead of " pure milk," as so-called pure milk may often be very poor 

 milk, and not good for butter; and the standard quality should be fixed 

 at from 11 to 12 per cent. 



A number of exhibits were shown at the meeting by Sir 

 James Hector ; and Mr. T. Kirk exhibited a collection of 

 mosses, and also a beautiful yellow flower, a new arrival in 

 New Zealand, from Mr. Duncan's nursery at Porirua — 

 (Euryops abrotanifolius, DC.) — a native of the Cape of Good 

 Hope. It produces its bright flowers in vast abundance 

 during the winter months — June to September. 



