Wellington Philosophical Society. 569 



The balance-sheet shows the receipts for the year to be £156 10s 5d., 

 and the expenditure £76 14s. 3d., leaving a balance in hand of £79 16s. 2d. 



The Research Fund, a fixed deposit in the bank, now amounts to 

 £36 10s. 10d., which increases the credit balance to £116 7s. 



Election of Officers for 1902. — President — W. T. L. 

 Travers, F.L.S. ; Vice-presidents — Sir J. Hector, F.E.S., and 



B. L. Mestaver; Council — Messrs. H. N. McLeod, E. Tregear, 

 F.G.S., M. "Chapman, G. Hogben, M.A., E. C. Harding, 

 G. V. Hudson, and Professor Easterfield ; Secretary and 

 Treasurer — E. B. Gore ; Auditor — T. King. 



Papers. — 1. " The Theory of the Polar Planimeter," by 



C. E. Adams, B.Sc. 



Sir James Hector said that a most ingeuious form of a planimeter 

 had been devised by Mr. Bevtrley, an inventive gentleman of Dunedin, 

 still among us, and was shown at the New Zealand Exhibition nearly 

 fony years ago. The following was an abstract of the aocount of Mr. 

 Beverley's instrument which was given in the Report on the New Zealand 

 Exhibition, 1865, page 188. This was now a very rare book. " Two Plato- 

 meters (not named ' Planimeters '), invented and made by A. Biverley, 

 Dunedin, are interesting and valuable instruments. An instrument to 

 effect the same purpose was first exhibited by the famous inventor and 

 mathematician Mr. E. Sang, of Kirkcaldv, in Scotland, at the exhibition 

 of 1851. Other similar instruments have been invented, especially by 

 Professor Clerk Maxwell, to overcome the mechanical difficulties by the 

 introduction of contact spheres. This is a beautiful idea, but mechani- 

 cally impossible. Mr. Beverley's platometer, which rejects sliding motion, 

 and is very simple and inexpensive, should come into general use in all 

 survey offices." At the same time he showed a clock which had been gi ing 

 ever since it was made without the aid of weights or springs — which, in 

 fact, as far as motive-power was concerned, had been untouched since its 

 construction. A glass oylinder filled with air resting on a surface of 

 cantor-oil suppl.ed the power, every change in temperature affectiug the 

 pressure. The force thus generated was taken up by an ingenious 

 mechanical contrivance and conveyed to the woiks. For forty years the 

 timepiece had kept time without stopping, and it bade fair to go as 1 >ng 

 as the works held together and the day and night temperatures continued 

 to vary. 



A member who objected that the pinions would clog and wear out 

 was reminded that the problem of perpetual motion was apart from wear- 

 aud-tear nf mechanism. 



Mr. Martin Gliaoman remarked that he had known the clock, which 

 was still going, for many yeats past. 



2. " Notes on the Sydney Chain Standard," by C. E. 



Adams, B.Sc. 



Mr. Martin Chapman said that in order to be able to tell whether 

 a thing was done properly its actual working had to be gone into. 

 He once happened by accident to be concerned in a matter which 

 enabled him to see how the testing of weights was work d practically. 

 As members of the societv probably knew, there were Inspectors of 

 Weights and Measures all over the colony. Tnese Inspectors were 

 generally policemen. Sometimes they were retired policemen. An In- 

 spector had a set of standard weights with which he had to compare 

 weights submitted to him to be tested, or weights which were suspected to 

 be untrue and which be had secured in order to test them. An lm 'Ortant 

 question, therefore, was how nearly the standard weights in the possession 



