OF THE AUSTRALIAN MEETING. 693 
examples were shown on the screen. The doubling and the weight of 
stars, the movements of the stellar system and its probable shape were 
among other branches of the subject dealt with. 
August 2, at the Literary Institute, Mr. H. Balfour on ‘ Primitive 
Methods of Making Fire, and their Survival for Ceremonial Purposes.’ 
The first part of the lecture described the various methods whereby fire 
is obtained by friction of wood among primitive peoples in various parts 
of the world, and touched upon their possible origin and geographical 
dispersal. The second part was devoted to the consideration of the 
ceremonial retention of such primitive and obsolete methods by peoples 
of more advanced culture, among whom the earlier processes have, for 
ordinary domestic purposes, been superseded by improved appliances, 
such as the flint and steel or the lucifer match. The production of 
‘pure-fire ’ for use in religious ritual, ‘ need-fire ’ for averting epidemics 
and other calamities, and ‘ new-fire’ as a means of promoting the 
welfare of crops, &c., afford very numerous and widely dispersed 
instances of the persistence in ceremonial fire-making of otherwise 
obsolete methods, and this aspect of the subject formed the main theme 
of the lecture, which was illustrated throughout with lantern-slides. 
August 3, at the Museum, Professor A. D. Waller, F.R.S., on ‘ The 
Electrical Action of the Human Heart.’ He gave a popular history of 
the electro-cardiogram, describing how it occurred to him in 1887 to 
use the limbs as electrodes leading off on opposite sides of the electrical 
equator of the heart from his right hand and left foot to a Lippmann 
electrometer, and watching the mercury column pulsate with his heart- 
beat; extending these investigations by means of Einthoven’s string 
galvanometer he devised a simple formula for calculating the axial angle 
of the heart which is of physiological importance. 
A lecture was also delivered in the Town Hall, Kalgoorlie, on 
July 31, by Mr. C. A. Buckmaster (lately an Assistant Secretary of the 
Board of Education) on ‘ Mining Education in England.’ The lecturer 
gave an account of the efforts that have been made in England to provide 
instruction in relation to metalliferous mining for day and for evening 
students. Special reference was made to the founding and progress of 
the Royal School of Mines, of the School of Metalliferous Mining 
(Cornwall), and of the characteristics of these schools. Attention was 
also drawn to the value the English experiments would possess in the 
development of technical instruction in mining in Australia. 
Various other lectures and speeches, of an unofficial character so far 
as concerned the Association, were delivered by Members, here as 
elsewhere, throughout the Meeting. 
On the evening of July 29 the first graduation ceremony held by the 
University of Western Australia took place in the ballroom at Govern- 
ment House, His Excellency the Governor presiding. The Meeting 
was addressed by Mr. Cecil Andrews, Pro-Chancellor, and honorary 
degrees were conferred on the following members of the Overseas 
Party :—Prof. Gunnar Andersson, Prof. W. Bateson,* Dr. F. W. 
Dyson, Dr. A. C. Haddon, Prof. W. A. Herdman,* Sir H. Reichel, 
Prof. A. D. Waller, Prof. J. Walther.* 
(*In absentié.) 
