310 Canadian Record of Science. 



two stations. The result is, however, invested with a correc- 

 tion due to the difference in nervous temperament or consti- 

 tution, technically known as the personal equation of the two 

 observers. To ascertain this quantity, although only a frac- 

 tional part of a second, special observations are taken for 

 determining the same. The observer with sluggish tempera- 

 ment puts a place too far west ; to him the stars do not transmit 

 over the threads in the telescope until they are actually past. 

 On the other hand, the nervous susceptibilities of another man 

 may be so constituted that the observer anticipates an event, 

 imagines the star to be on the thread when in fact it has not 

 reached there, and thereby observes as if he were in reality to 

 the east of his true position by a quantity equal to his per- 

 sonal equation. The work was begun in March 1903 and 

 completed at Sydney Australia in January 1904. The first 

 mutually satisfactory exchange of clock signals between the 

 cable station at Southport, near Brisbane, and Norfolk island 

 cable station and Sydney, was had on September 28th, 1903, so 

 that that day may be considered as the one on which for the 

 first time the earth was girdled astronomically. 



On the way to the Fiji Islands a visit was paid to the 

 Hawaiian islands, but it is unnecessary to dilate on their charm, 

 yet it is not all charm and constant blue sky. With Nature it 

 is as Schiller says of man : "Des Lebens ungemischte Freude 

 ward keinem Irdischen zu Theil." A plant originally intro- 

 duced for ornamental purposes in Honolulu has now spread 

 over the islands and has proved such a curse that the govern- 

 ment is doing its utmost for its extermination. It is the lantana. 

 In Hawaii we received the first Polynesian greeting — the 

 melodious ALOHA, the word being equivalent to our "wel- 

 come" or "good-day," but literally meaning "Love to you." 

 The preponderance of vowels in this word as well as in all 

 Polynesian words, gives the language a softness foreign to those 

 of Teutonic root. 



I arrived in Fiji in May, which is one of the autumn 

 months in the southern hemisphere. My first impression was 

 that I had landed in a hot-house — the oppressive, warm, 

 moisture-laden atmosphere, where one smells the soil and the 



