INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 15 
observing parties, viz., Sydney, Port Macquarie, Clarence River, 
Lord Howe Island, and Dromedary. Victoria had observing 
parties at Melbourne, Sale, and Hobart, while South Australia 
was represented at Wentworth. 
In New Zealand the old station at Burnham was occupied by 
Colonel Tupman and an English party, assisted by private ob- 
servers ; and Professor Peters, with an American party, observed 
at Queenstown. Al! the New Zealand observers were successful, 
as were the observers at Hobart, Melbourne, Wentworth, but at 
Sale, in Gippsland, cloudy skies made observation impossible, 
as was the case with all the New South Wales parties. 
One of the first conditions necessary to enable an observatory 
to undertake astronomical work, in conjunction with similar 
institutions in other parts of the world, is that its geographical 
position should be ascertained with all possible accuracy. The 
Australian observatories have on several occasions undertaken 
interchange of time signals by electric telegraph for determining 
the difference of lcrgitude between them. The first occasion 
of this kind was in 1861, soon after the Sydney and Melbourne 
telegraph line was completed, when time signals were exchanged 
between Williamstown and Sydney Observatories ; the resulting 
difference of longitude was 24 min. 55.38 sec., that now adopted 
being 24 min. 55.40 sec. 
In 1868 similar work was done for ascertaining the position 
of the 141st meridian north of the Murray for the boundary 
line between South Australia and New South Wales, and signals 
were exchanged between Melbourne, Sydney, and Sir Charles 
Todd’s temporary observatory erected close to the boundary line. 
In 1874, while the United States observing parties were in 
Hobart after the transit of Venus, similar signals were exchanged 
through the Tasmanian cable between their observatory in 
Barrack-square and the Melbourne Observatory, and similar 
exchanges were subsequently carried out between Sydney and 
New Zealand, and Sydney and Brisbane. 
After the transit of 1882 it became of the utmost importance 
to determine the difference of longitude by telegraph between 
Greenwich and some of the Australian observatories, and as the 
differences between Greenwich and Singapore had already been 
telegraphically measured, it only remained to determine the 
difference between the latter place and some point in the Aus- 
tralian telegraph system to complete the chain of longitudes 
between the Australian observatories and Greenwich. It was 
therefore arranged that the British observers, who went to 
Queensland for the second transit of Venus, should after that 
occurrence proceed to Singapore, establish an observatory for 
the exchange of time signals between Singapore, Java, and Port 
Darwin, to which latter place our present Government Astro- 
nomer, Mr. Baracchi, proceeded in December, 1882, and formed 
