54:8 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



known as parhelia or paraselenae, according as they are seen 

 by sunhght or moonhght. 



Mr. Stock was very fortunate in having had the oppor- 

 tunity of seeing so unusual and so beautiful an appearance ; and 

 the remarkably full and accurate description of the display 

 and of its attending circumstances which he recorded are very 

 much to his credit, and are an example to all observers. 

 Without such a full record it would have been impossible to 

 trace the causes which produced the phenomenon. Whether 

 or not the explanation I have given be quite correct, I am 

 convinced that the cause of the appearance was the moonlight 

 refracted in the ice-crystals, and that the phenomenon was 

 analogous to a halo ; although under such peculiar conditions 

 that I confess I should not have expected to see it. 



Art. LXV. — Teymyson and Browning : A Betrospect of 

 Victorian Poetry. 



By Professor C. A. M. Pond. 



\_Read before the Aiickland Institute, 39th May, 1S93.] 



It was very soon after the members of the Institute had done 

 me the honour of electing me its President for the current year 

 that I began to be troubled in my mind as to the subject on 

 w4iich I should deliver my presidential address. I understood 

 that I had been elected as, by virtue of my official position in 

 Auckland, in some measure a representative of literature, and 

 it was evident that some phase or aspect of literature must be 

 dealt with in the address given to inaugurate the proceedings 

 of the Institute for the year. But now came the question, 

 What phase or aspect ? And that question I found somewhat 

 difficult to answer. A presidential address in an Institute 

 such as this is usually either a retrospect or a summary of the 

 progress of some one branch of knowledge in the years imme- 

 diately preceding. Now, for many years past the presidential 

 chair of our Institute has been filled by gentlemen who have, 

 either from the theoretical or practical point of view, repre- 

 sented some province of science. And it must be obvious that 

 in this respect the representative of science has the advantage 

 of the representative of literature — the advantage of fact over 

 opinion. In the great and glorious progress of science in this 

 century the most amazing discoveries jostle one another to 

 gain recognition from us, appeahng now to our sense of utility 

 in their practical applications, now to our imagination by 



