556 Proceedings. 



his surprise, on several evenings, that through rifts in the vapour masses, crimsoned in the 

 ordinary manner by the sun after it had set, a back-ground of intense greenish blue was 

 visible. After all the ordinary sun-set tints had faded, this blue changed to orange pink, 

 and graduated off through the various prismatic tints to a magnificent crimson spanning 

 over what appeared to be cloudless sky, considerably to the eastward of the meridian. 

 This spectacle gradually faded with the advance of nightfall, but lasted about one hour and 

 twenty minutes after the ordinary twilight tints had faded. This shows that the vapour 

 causing the tints must have an enormous and very unusual altitude. A similar pheno- 

 menon in the evening sky was observed in New Zealand about sixteen years since, but 

 the exact date has not been ascertained. The glow of September last still continues, but 

 it is drawing now towards the pole, as if the unusual height of the refracting medium 

 was extending the antarctic twilight tint even to our latitudes. 



With the hint we get from the self-recording barometers it is very difficult to avoid 

 connecting this curious phenomenon which has been seen all over Australia and New 

 Zealand, with the Sunda eruption.* 



Dr. Hector also read a letter from Major Scaunell, Inspector A. C, stationed at Taupo, 

 giving an account of marked oscillation in the level of Taupo Lake, amounting to a 

 vertical rise and fall of 18 inches, which was repeated several times at intervals of 20 

 minutes at about noon on the same date that the tidal disturbance was felt on the coast, 

 viz., on 28th August ; affording clear evidence of the passing of waves through the lake, 

 due to a motion of the land, probably produced by the unusual periods of the tidal 

 inequalities of pressure on either coast. 



Mr. Higginson, C.E., reminded the meeting that in a paper read before this Society on 

 2nd February, 1878, t he had described similar disturbances of Lake Wakatipu, which were 

 observed by him on 17th November, 1877. 



7. " Notes on the Colour of Telleriuni," by W. Skey. 



Annual Meeting. 13th February, 1884. 

 Dr. Buller, President, in the chair. 

 New Members. — W. F. "Wheeler, F. W. Pennefather, — Bichinond, and 

 Eev. H. van Staveren. 



Abstract op Keport for 1883. 

 During the past year ten general meetings and a conversazione were held. The 

 attendance at the meetings was larger than usual. Six papers had been read on Geolo- 

 gical subjects, 6 on Zoology, 13 on Botany, 2 on Chemistry, and 13 on Miscellaneous 

 subjects. There were now 217 members on the roll, 15 having been added during the 

 year. 75 volumes had been added to the library. Extensive alterations were being made 

 in the library of the New Zealand Institute, and the Museum authorities had converted 



*In " Nature," October 25th, No. 730, p. 627, received to-day, I find that a similar 

 disturbance was traced by the barograph, at Mauritius, at the same Greenwich date as at 

 Melbourne, and as these two stations are at the same distance from Sunda, in nearly 

 opposite directions, there can be no doubt but that the disturbance was due to the propaga- 

 tion of a circular wave in the upper atmosphere having the velocity already stated. J. 

 Hector, 20th December, 1883. 



t Trans. N.Z. Inst., vol. x., p. 180. 



