INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 3 
south-eastern tribes seem to be indifferent to eclipses of the sun, 
but believe one of the moon to portend the death of some of their 
people. 
There can be little doubt that the first astronomical observa- 
tions made in Australasian waters were by our early navigators, 
Tasman, Dampier, and others, prior to Captain Cook, but we 
must remember that nautical astronomy of the 17th century was 
not of very high order, owing principally to the lack of accurate 
astronomical tables and instruments of precision; the geo- 
eraphical results obtainable by the earlier of these navigators 
were only correct within rather wide limits. The marine chrono- 
meter was only invented a short time before Cook’s first voyage 
to these waters, for Harrison had about this time completed his 
third and most perfect one (for which the British Admiralty 
rewarded him with a prize of about £24,000), but they did not 
come into general use for navigation for some years after. Still, 
whatever may have been done astronomically by the navigators 
preceding Cook, there can be little doubt that he did the first 
real astronomical work in Australasia, for, apart from his great 
skill as a navigator and geographer, he was a trained astronomer, 
and had been selected largely for this reason by the British 
Admiralty in 1768 to conduct his famous expeditior to the 
islands of the Pacific for the purpose of observing the transit of 
Venus in June, 1769, which he successfully accomplished 
at Otaheite, after which he discovered and visited several 
islands in the Pacific, and eventually rediscovered New Zealand 
on 6th October of the same year, and observed the transit of 
Mercury on 9th November at a place on the north-east coast of 
New Zealand, now called Mercury Bay. Sailing north on 31st 
March, 1770, he discovered New Holland, landed at Botany, 
and took possession of Australia in the name of Great Britain. 
Eighteen years after this, the first Australasian settlement by 
the British took place at Port Jackson, but in the early days of 
colonisation, under many difficulties and adverse circumstances, 
astronomical science found no congenial soil for its growth or 
advancement. Nevertheless, during the first year of settlement 
the British Board of Lengitude sent out a naval officer, Lieut. 
Dawes, “‘to make astronomical observations, and look for a 
return” of Halley’s famous comet, which, it was predicted by Dr. 
Neville Maskelyne (the Astronomer Royal at Greenwich), would 
reappear in the Southern Hemisphere about September in that 
year (1788). 
Lieut. Dawes brought out from home sufficient astronomical 
instruments to equip an observatory, which was erected soon 
after his arrival near what is now known as Dawes’ Point, in 
Sydney Harbour. 
At our first Congress in Sydney my old friend and colleague, 
Mr. H. C. Russell, Government Astronomer of New South Wales, 
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