xxiv President's Address 



obtained on a four-feet surface, it -would, I am confident, fall 

 far short of the perfection of the large mirrors already in 

 existence. It is only when the surface is large that the 

 imperfections, insignificant on small ones, become so 

 apparent. 



No one in the colony can have any interest in 

 overpraising or bolstering up our great telescope, those 

 most closely concerned in it least of all. Their duty is to find 

 out its defects and perfections, remedy and eliminate the 

 former as far as possible, and set it to the work for 

 which it was obtained, and when necessary give their honest 

 opinions of its merits and faults, unbiassed by any con- 

 siderations whatever ; and this has been done. In closing my 

 remarks on this subject, I wish to point out that the 

 fact of this instrument not being perfect does not in any 

 way warrant the assumption that it is a failure. Between 

 perfection and failure there are many grades, the higher of 

 which are seldom reached by human handicraft. I am quite 

 satisfied that our reflector will compare favourably with the 

 only two large ones now in use, namely. Lord Rosse's and 

 Mr. Lassell's ; and in our present state of practical optics we 

 cannot reasonably ask more. 



The trigonometrical operations of the geodetic survey have 

 now spread a network of carefully -measured triangles over 

 nearly the whole face of the colony. The coast line, from 

 the boundary of South Australia to Cape Howe, has been 

 measured by it, and with the exception of the north-west 

 portion of the colony, known as the Mallee or Upper 

 Wimmera District, nearly every district has been enmeshed 

 by the geodetic surveyors. 



Among the results of these operations the determination 

 of true distances between point and point, place and place, 

 and the latitudes and longitudes of all the mountain and 

 hill tops used as trigonometrical stations, as well as of 



