xxxvi President's Address 



of Venus was also observed, though the weather was not 

 generally as favourable as in Melbourne. At Mornington, 

 the two last contacts were observed. At Sandhurst, the 

 weather proved very unfavourable, and only the last 

 internal contact could be seen. At Glenrowan, the first 

 internal contact only was observed. 



Dr. Galle, of Breslau Observatory, has lately communi- 

 cated the final result of the observations of the planet Flora, 

 during the opposition of October 1873 ; the measurements 

 made in the Northern Hemisphere, were compared with 

 similar measurements made at the Cape of Good Hope, 

 Cordova, and Melbourne, and gave the solar parallax equal 

 to 8^8 73, which is nearly identical with the recent 

 determinations of M. Cornu, from the velocity of light, 

 and of M. Puiseux from the Transit of Venus as observed at 

 Pekin and St. Paul's Island. This value is also so very nearly 

 the same as that determined from the observations of Mars 

 in 1862, and that by Leverrier, from the perturbations 

 of the planets, that it is not at all likely that any material 

 change will be necessary to satisfy the combined observations 

 of the Transit of Venus. At a late meeting of the Royal 

 Astronomical Society, the Astronomer Royal stated that 

 he could easily ^k on the foreign astronomer, whom he- 

 would like to see entrusted with the final reduction and 

 combination of all the observations of the late Transit of 

 Venus, but as yet it is not known whether any one has 

 been selected for the work. 



On the whole the late Transit of Venus has been a great 

 success. In places of the greatest importance astronomically, 

 such as Kerguelen and the Auckland islands, where the 

 probability of bad weather was very great, the sky seems 

 to have cleared in time for the phenomenon almost 

 miraculously, and in most of those places where the 

 low altitude of the sun increased the atmospheric 



