1G4 Proceedings of the Royal Society of Victoria. 



should be made into the results of pendulums now in 

 existence. At the last transit of Venus, a party of scientific 

 observers under Professor Harkness, brought out with them 

 their pendulums. They were swung here, and had been 

 swung before in several places along the Pacific line, but he 

 had never seen any results published of those observations. 

 He did not think it would be necessary in many places, at all 

 events, to take any trouble about the geographical position 

 or actual time. Nearly all the points could be got at the 

 established Observatories, so that it would be hardly neces- 

 sary for the observer to burden himself with transit 

 instruments or anything of that kind. He thought one or 

 two pendulums could be obtained from Kew on loan. We 

 could get the pendulum that Professor Neumeyer used from 

 the Hamburg Observatory. It follows, therefore, that the 

 expense of the undertaking would not exceed the actual 

 expense of the observer and his assistants. If once an 

 observer has become au fait in his observations, they can be 

 done very rapidly. The work done by Professor Neumeyer 

 occupied only two hours. American observers did it in two 

 hours. The supports of the pendulum are made so nicely 

 now, that they have only to be set to be swung. 



Mr. White thought this a matter of great importance. 

 Strange to say, attention was drawn to this matter in the 

 early days of the colony. The first arrangement of pendu- 

 lums was made here by the Spaniards, then in Port Jackson 

 by the French Expedition in 1819. The results were not 

 very successful. It was done in Parramatta again in 1827, 

 more satisfactorily. The only measurements in Melbourne 

 that he knew of were those of Professor Neumeyer and 

 Captain Harkness. He had seen Captain Harkness four or 

 five years ago, and he mentioned that the results were not such 

 as to please him, and he had not published them. He thought 

 the ]5ersonal expense would be nmch larger than Mr. Love 

 anticipated, although the apparatus could be obtained ; and 

 he had no doubt the resources of the Observatory would be 

 at his disposal, and that if the matter were l)rought before 

 the different Governments, Victoria at all events would lend 

 assistance. He would like to have more observations made 

 upon the main land of Australia, than at the coast. 



Professor Lyle said that this was a subject that had 

 interested all scientific men, from Newton's time downward. 

 They had worked at the probability of the shape of the earth. 



