OF THE AUSTRALIAN MEETING. 687 
mails by which such information should be sent were specified. These 
plans, tentative as they were, succeeded so far that the use of the 
cables was necessitated only six times from London to Australia and 
five times in the opposite direction during the period named. 
At the last meeting of Council before Dr. Rivett’s departure from 
London (December 5, 1913), it was resolved that the thanks of the 
Council be expressed to him for the assistance he had rendered in 
connection with the arrangements for the Australian Meeting during 
his visit to England, and to the authorities in Australia under whose 
direction he had paid this visit. 
The Assistant Secretary left London early in June 1914 to join the 
General Organising Secretary in Australia, when they visited together 
all the centres (except Perth) before the beginning of the Meeting, 
as Dr. Rivett had already done on previous occasions. 
Shipping Arrangements.—In the meantime the work of the officers 
at home was concerned mainly with making up the Overseas Party 
(as has been shown already), and those sections of it which were to 
visit Western Australia in advance of the main body, and New Zealand 
after the conclusion of the Meeting in Sydney. With the exception of 
the arrangement with the Orient Company, which was originally made 
by the Australian authorities, negotiations with the shipping companies 
as to special fares and arrangements for Overseas Members had been 
conducted, and continued to be so, principally from the London Office, 
and may be briefly summarised here :— 
(1) Via Suez, return, 1st class £100 (refund £35 if return half of 
ticket unused). Second class £65. Orient and P. & O. lines (return 
tickets interchangeable between these) ; also Norddeutscher Lloyd line. 
(2) Via Suez outward; return via Malay Archipelago to Colombo 
and Suez, Ist class £130. Burns, Philp and other lines locally through 
Archipelago. 
(3) Round the world via Atlantic, Vancouver, or San Francisco, and 
Suez, £120; or via South Africa instead of Suez, £100. All trans- 
Atlantic lines ; Canadian Pacific, Union Steamship Co, of New Zealand, 
and Oceanic trans-Pacific services. 
(4) North American routes, return, 1st class £115 10s. 
1 Projected Visit to New Zealand.—An invitation was received in 1911 
from the High Commissioner for New Zealand, on behalf of his Government, for 
some of the Members visiting Australia to proceed to the Dominion, and it was 
subsequently arranged, after consultation with the Australian authorities, that 
a party should leave the Meeting of the Association at the conclusion of the 
Sydney session, and proceed to New Zealand to take part in scientific meetings, 
excursions, &c., together with representative Canadian and American men of 
science invited by the Dominion authorities. A committee under the chairman- 
ship of the High Commissioner, and including representatives of the Association, 
selected in London a number of Members for invitation, and to receive grants in 
aid of additional expenses incurred by the visit out of a fund provided by the 
Dominion Government, while Professor T. H. Laby (of Victoria College, 
Wellington) and others concerned themselves with arrangements in New 
Zealand. But while the Meeting of the Association was in progress it was 
announced that the arrangements for the visit to New Zealand had unhappily 
proved in great measure abortive, owing to the effects of the European War. 
