65 



province was tlie iiortli~\vest, and it brought large bodies of i"ain witli it. 

 It also caused the rivers to rise. He had noticed that on the south-east 

 and north sides of the mountains the snow line was lower than on the 

 west side. It required a considerable amount of observation to convince 

 him that the greater altitude of the snow line on the west side was 

 owing to the dii-ection of the prevailing wind. The wind had far more 

 effect in melting snow than the sun. He had observed that the rivers 

 rose more rapidly when a north-west wind was blowing, with a drizzling 

 rain, than when a heavy fall of rain took place. The lakes exercised a 

 very important influence on the discharge of our rivers, by restricting 

 it within certain bounds. He had known the lakes to rise twelve feet. 

 This water covered an immense area, and had it been suddenly thrown 

 into the rivers, great mischief must have resulted. In fact, were it 

 not for the lakes acting as reservoirs, the Clutha would spread its bed 

 over a width of three or four miles, and do on a large scale what the 

 Rangitata and other Canterbury rivers did on a small one. 



3. "On the Discovery of New Zealand," by A. Eccles, F.RC.S. 

 It had been supposed that Tasman was the first discoverer of New 

 Zealand, but lately a claim had been put forward that Arabic geographers 

 were acquainted with the existence of New Zealand. The editor of 

 "The English Mechanic" for December 3, 1869, p. 279, states, in answer 

 to a correspondent, " Urban," that various Ai-abic geographical works of 

 the 13th and 14tli centuries, many of which having been translated, as 

 "El Ideesee," by M. Jaubert, are to be found in the fine libraries of 

 "Vienna and Paris, as well as in the various Asiatic Ethnological Societies, 

 both English and foreign, describe New Zealand as a large and very 

 mountainous island in the farthest Southern Ocean, beyond and far 

 south-east of both Ray (Borneo) and Bartailie (New Guinea), and as 

 being uninkabited by man, and containing nothing but gigantic birds 

 known as the " Seemoah." Some of the more important passages of the 

 works are ti'anslated in Journals of the Royal Asiatic Society, the papers 

 of tlie Ethnological, etc., Bull, de Soc. Asiatique, Journ. de Zoologie, 

 Archiv. von Arch ; Journ. de Soc. Archgie j Ann. Yien. Gesell., etc. 

 The Chairman stated that he had been unable to find any similar men- 

 tion in any work on New Zealand to which he had access ; and recom- 

 mended members who had friends in Vienna or Paris to write to them, 

 in order that M. Jaubert's woi-ks might be searched. 



