Wellington Philosophical Society. 605 



Fifth Meeting : 9th September, 1896. 



Mr. R. C. Harding, Vice-president, in the chair. 



Papers . — 1. " Australian Weather-charts and New Zealand 

 Storms," with diagrams and charts, by Major-General Schaw, 

 C.B,, E.E. {Transactions, p. 61.) 



Sir J. Hector said General Scbaw deserved thanks for the heavy 

 task he had undertaken in searching through the hundreds of vreather- 

 charts that were filed iu this office. Without a much larger meteoro- 

 logical staff it was impossible to turn them to proper account. They 

 were the result of an expenditure contributed by all the colonies, but 

 New Zealand contributed only a small share. The information was ex- 

 changed by telegraph daily, and each of the colonies prepared a weather- 

 chart similar to those exhibited, which were the Queensland charts. 

 The speaker explained how, about fifteen years ago, after several con- 

 ferences, he had prepared diagrams showing all the usual forms of isobars 

 — twenty for Australia and twenty-four for New Zealand. These were 

 numbered, and the numbers for each day were interchanged by cable. 

 Stereotyped blocks of these diagrams had been supplied to all the principal 

 newspapers, and for some time they were used, but now they were not, 

 so that the New Zealand public no longer got any benefit from the daily 

 telegrams, and the old-fashioned and obsolete method of weather-warn- 

 ings had been resorted to by the newspapers. In some respects he differed 

 from the General's views. Although it was convenient to treat all wind 

 variations as closed curves, there was reason for believing that this was 

 only true for the tropical circular storms, and to a modified extent for 

 those in the Northern Hemisphere. In our south temperate latitudes 

 the weather-changes were most frequently curves open to the south — that 

 was, without easterly winds. The pressure-changes advanced eastward in 

 great waves that died out as they approached the great sub-tropical areas 

 of high pressure. In the advancing or east side of the wave the wind was 

 north-v^'est, and the barometer fell rapidly, while on the following or 

 western side the wind was south-west and the barometer rose rapidly. 

 The speaker illustrated this by the curves of the self-registering barometer, 

 for the month of February, 1895, at Wellington, Dunedin, and on board 

 the '' Hinemoa " when at the southern islands. The curves showed that 

 four great dips took place during the month, and that these intervened 

 between north-west and south-west winds, there being no indication of the 

 closing-in of the curves by easterly winds in the far south. Such in- 

 trumental curves were more trustworthy than isobars, which were neces- 

 sarily to a large extent conjectural, and were therefore more useful for 

 tracing the weather-changes. He thought we must not cling too rigidly 

 to the theory of circular movements of the atmosphere in southern 

 latitudes. 



Mr. Hudson said the members must feel indebted to both General 

 Schaw and Sir James Hector for the valuable information they had given 

 on this most interesting subject of weather forecasting. 



2. " On Two New Species of Lepidoptera " (Orthosia mar- 

 garita, n. sp., and Asaphodes siris, n. sp.), by E. F. Hawthorne. 

 Specimens exhibited. {Transactions, p. 282.) 



