On the Work of the Past Year in Astronomy and Celestial Physics. 
By J. S. Wess. 
[Read before the Otago Institute, 17th September, 1872.] 
Wear I am about to say this evening will not fulfil the promise of the title 
under which it has been announced, but I hope that it will be of none the less 
interest on that account. Indeed, any attempt properly to sketch the work of 
a twelvemonth in such a wide range of research, within the limits of a single 
address, must of necessity end in a barren and uninstructive catalogue of 
details. I have only selected for remark a few matters of the greatest interest 
to all, and in regard to those have confined myself almost wholly to the part 
_ of a narrator. 
Before entering on the proper subject of this address, I cannot refrain from 
expressing a regret, which I have no doubt you all share with me, at the fact 
recently made public that the Astronomer Royal has replied in discouraging 
terms to the communications addressed to him by the Astronomical Society of 
Christchurch on the subject of the formation of an efficient Observatory at 
that city, On the last anniversary of the foundation of the sister Province— 
on the day of its attaining the mature age of twenty-one years—in one of 
those bursts of genial enthusiasm so often inspired by the celebration of 
anniversaries, especially where those celebrations take the form of public 
dinners, and which do occasionally lead to very useful results, it was 
determined by some of our publicspirited fellow-colonists in Christchurch that 
a lasting memorial of the day they were celebrating should be enterprised, and 
their aspirations (determined by what influences I cannot say) took definite 
shape in the formation of the society I have alluded to, under whose auspices 
it is proposed to establish such a memorial in the form of an Astronomical 
Observatory. This society set about its work in right good earnest, and I 
think we ought most cordially to wish it success. Within a few years from 
the present time it is almost certain that an Observatory will be founded in 
New Zealand. Those of you who take a deep interest in those sciences to 
which we owe our knowledge of what is beyond the little globe on which we 
live, will join with me in desiring that this Observatory shall be as near to us 
as may be. It seems, however, to be very probable that if our friends in 
Christchurch fail in this creditable enterprise, Auckland will be the chosen 
spot. In every list that I have seen of the places from which it is intended 
that British astronomers shall observe the transit of Venus over the sun’s 
disc, in 1874, I notice that Auckland is mentioned. How far this is authori- 
tative I do not know, but it is now nearly two years since it was mooted at a 
~ Meeting of the Auckland Institute that some steps should be taken to secure 
Nye et a et ee eee ee eee 
