for the year 1873. xix 



value in Australia, if by a careful selection of typical 

 stations, a proper meteorological blockade could be esta- 

 blished. We have now the electric telegraph extending from 

 the tropics to moderately high latitudes (a large portion over 

 the centre of the continent), besides a long stretch of coast 

 line, both east and west and north and south, electrically 

 connected, comprising places admirably adapted for stations. 

 The great requirement is an intercolonial agreement upon 

 one uniform plan of observations to be systematically carried 

 out at selected stations, the establishment of a head quarters 

 in each colony, and an authorised use of the various inter- 

 colonial telegraph lines and cables for transmission of 

 weather telegrams. In talking over these matters some time 

 since with Mr. Todd, of Adelaide, he expressed himself strong 

 in the conviction that one important key to our meteorology 

 in the South of Australia was the varying southward reach 

 of the monsoons ; the determination of this point alone 

 would, for its own sake, and without reference to its future 

 bearings, be a great work effected, and is certainly one which 

 should . be immediately undertaken. The success that has 

 already attended the international meteorological system in 

 Europe and America should encourage Australia to a similar 

 organisation, for in no part of the world would the power of 

 forecasting weather be of more value. 



One of the most important of all astronomical occurrences 

 will take place in December, 1874 — the Transit of Venus 

 across the Sun's disc. This phenomenon, as is well known, 

 presents one of the best means by which to determine the 

 length of the "great astronomical measuring rod," the 

 distance between the earth and the sun ; as the very foun- 

 dations of astronomy rest upon the correctness of this dis- 

 tance, and as the opportunities for redetermination by this 

 method are so rare as to occur only once or twice in a 

 century, it is not to be wondered at that considerable interest 



