WELLINGTON PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY. 



Sixth Meeting (Annual Meeting) : Gth October, 1909. 

 Mr. A. Hamilton, President, in the chair. 



New Members.— Mr. John Strauchon, Mr. T. A. Johnston, Mr. 0. N- 

 Campbell, Mr. H. E. Girdlestone, Mr. P. G. Morgan, and Mr. K. M. Graham- 



Exhibits. — 1. Mr. B. C. Aston exhibited specimens of the alkaloids of 

 the pukatea. 



2. The Chairman called the attention of the meeting to a pig's jaw which 

 he exhibited, showing a remarkable variation in the tusks. 



The jaw had been found at Pi})iriki. 



3. The Chairman exhibited a medal which he had received as Director 

 of the Dominion Museum from the University of Oviedo, Spain. 



The medal had been struck in commemoration of the third centenary of the 

 University, and in the covering letter the opinion was expressed that the presentation 

 might be" " regarded as a happy emblem of the fraternal friendship existing between 

 the ancient and classic seat of learning in Oviedo and the justly celebrated Museum in 

 New Zealand." This extract, the Chairman remarked, showed how the work of the 

 late Sir James Hector, the founder of the Museum, was regarded in distant lands. 



Papers. — 1. " Preferential Voting and Vote-couiiting," by G. Hogben, 

 M.A. 



The author delivered an address on the subject of this paper, restricting hiraself 

 to systems in which only one member is to be elected for each constituency, and lucidly 

 explained several schemes that have been devised to make sure of the election of the 

 right candidate. The right candidate was the one who could singly beat each of the 

 others, or the one preferred by the majority of the electors to any other single candidate. 

 The author, by a series of numerical illustrations, showed that the second ballot, so far 

 as indicating the preference of the majority in a single electorate, had the same defects 

 as the old system of allotting the seat to the candidate at the head of the poll, and he 

 showed how the second-ballot system might in some cases return a candidate who 

 represented a minority. Other systems were also shown to fail, and a description was 

 then given of the author's extension of Nansen's system of voting, in which the counting 

 of the votes was much simplified. 



2. " On Hongi's Armour," by A. Hamilton. 



The author read some interesting correspondence settling the historic problem of 

 Hongi's armour. 



The following papers were taken as read : — 



3. " Notes on a Small Ethnological Collection from the Solomon Islands," 

 by A. Hamilton, from notes supplied by the Rev. W. G. Ivens. 



4. " Notes on Lepidoptera collected in Otago and Southland in the Season 

 1908-9," by A. Hamilton and F. S. Oliver. 



5. " A Review of the Present Position of the Paleeontology of New 

 Zealand," by A. Hamilton. 



