for the year 1866. 121 



this work by the beginning of the current year have also 

 occupied much of the attention of the officers of the 

 establishment. In February last, the survey was fairly 

 under way. The portion of the heavens that it is proposed 

 shall be surveyed by our Observatory will occupy many 

 years, and as it intended that our part shall be completely 

 reduced to mean places for a fixed epoch, the necessary 

 calculations and reductions will tax the present staff rather 

 heavily. 



A self-registering anemometer, on Dr. Robinson's principle, 

 and similar to that used at the Royal Observatory, Kew, 

 was added to the appliances of the establishment last year, 

 and now daily yields its faithful and continuous record of 

 the velocity and direction of wind, and their changes. 

 Arrangements have been made for adopting self-registering 

 instruments for meteorological and magnetic records, as far 

 as possible ; which will, of course, not only relieve the 

 department of a large amount of mere routine work, but 

 render the registration of the several phenomena incom- 

 parably more complete than they could possibly be from 

 observations at stated intervals. 



Professor M'Coy, in his presidential address in 1864, 

 dwelt at some length on the subject of the great Southern 

 telescope, and on the action your society had taken respect- 

 ing it in former years. It will, therefore, I think, be of 

 some interest to you to hear of the progress that has been 

 made in this matter. At the time of Professor M'Coy's 

 address, the munificent offer by Mr. Lassels of his great 

 reflecting telescope to the Melbourne Observatory had just 

 reached us, and it was fully expected that this famous 

 instrument would have been by this time erected in Mel- 

 bourne, our Legislature having voted a sum of money to 

 cover the cost of conve3^ance and of some necessary altera- 

 tions to fit it for these latitudes. Subsequent correspondence, 



