INAUGURAL ADDRESS. th 
WESTERN AUSTRALIA. 
A good deal of astronomical observation with small survey 
instruments has been done in Western Australia for many years 
past, and while the results no doubt served the survey purposes 
desired, the character of the instruments used precluded the 
attainment of sufficient accuracy to class it as astronomical 
work. Recently, however, the Western Australian Government 
has built a fine observatory at Perth, and furnished it with excel- 
lent modern instruments, and appointed an accomplished astro- 
nomer, Mr. Cook, who has had many years’ training at the 
Adelaide Observatory under Sir Charles Todd; and I think from 
my personal knowledge of Mr. Cook, and the fine instruments at 
his disposal, I may predict that Western Australia will soon add 
substantially to the growth of astronomy in Australasia. 
New ZEALAND. 
There can be little doubt that before Captain Cook’s arrival 
in 1769 no astronomical work had been done in New Zealand, 
for none of the earler navigators appear to have landed there. 
As already stated, Cook observed the transit of Mercury on the 
north-east coast of the North Island in 1769, and this was pro- 
bably the first purely astronomical work done in Australasia. 
These islands were not peopled by Europeans till 1839 under the 
New South Wales Government, and became an independent 
colony in 1841. 
Sir James Ross visited New Zealand on his way to the 
antarctiv regions in 1840, and obtained some geographical deter- 
minations, and in 1852 the hydrographical expedition of Stokes 
and Richards carried out the great Admiralty survey of the coast, 
which included a large amount of astronomical work for survey 
and geographical purposes. The initial point of this survey was 
Pipetea Point, near Wellington, the longitude of which was 
ascertained to be 11 hours 39 minutes 11.53 seconds east. 
In 1868 a small observatory was established by the Govern- 
ment on an elevated site near Wellington, and furnished with a 
transit and several astronomical clocks, with which local time 
has been maintained, and time balls dropped daily at several of 
the chief towns for maritime and public purposes. So far, how- 
ever, as can be ascertained such astronomical work has been 
limited to maintenance of local time. During the transit of 
Venus expeditions to New Zealand in 1874 Major Palmer ex- 
changed time signals with the Sydney Observatory, and similar 
determinations were made in 1883 by Mr. Adams, of the New 
Zealand Survey Department. New Zealand thus became con- 
nected with the chain of longitude determinations linking Aus- 
tralasia with Greenwich, completed in 1883, to which I shall 
refer later on, and by which the positions given by Cook and 
Stokes were confirmed within very small limits. 
