xxii President's Address 



Our observatory has been engaged with its usual work in 

 astronomy, meteorology, terrestrial magnetism, and general 

 physics. Considerable progress has been made in the 

 Melbourne portion of the survey of the southern heavens ; 

 the sky lying between the 60th and 52nd parallels of 

 declination has been carefully surveyed, and the positions of 

 38,805 stars established and catalogued, of which 29,633 

 have been reduced to the epoch agreed upon, namely, 1875, 

 and their positions at that date computed. Our staif of 

 self-registering meteorological instruments may now be con- 

 sidered complete, and consist of three magnetographs (that 

 is for declination, dip, and horizontal intensity), a 

 thermograph, a barograph, electrograph, and anemograph. 

 With these instruments a continuous and unceasing record 

 is obtained by the aid of photography of all the variations in 

 the force and direction of the earth's magnetism, of the 

 temperature of the air, and of evaporation, of the state and 

 variations of the pressure of the air, atmospheric electricity, 

 as well as of the direction, changes, and force of the wind. 



Since my last address both the 1st and 3rd volumes of the 

 Melbourne Observations have been published. The first 

 contains all the results obtained at Williamstown before the 

 Observatory was removed to Melbourne ; and the third 

 pertains entirely to astronomical work done at the Melbourne 

 Observatory in the years 1866, 1867, and 1868. The great 

 Melbourne telescope, as you are aware, arrived in Melbourne 

 in November, 1868, and was erected a few months after- 

 wards. It has now been fairly at work for about 10 months, 

 and some of the results obtained have already been laid 

 before you by Mr. Le Sueur. 



An impression appears to have got abroad that there is 

 something wrong with the great telescope, and it has even 

 been whispered that it is a failure. The efforts, on the one 

 hand, to counteract this impression by statements of the 



