38 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



gladly conform to this rule, but first I niust thank you most smcerely for 

 the honour conferred upon me, and to assure you that I shall endeavour to 

 advance, to the best of my abihties, the interests of our Society, which now 

 has existed about fifteen years, and at the cradle of which I have stood. It 

 was the intention of the Council to have this address delivered at a con- 

 versazione, to be held, if possible, in the new Museum buildings, but as the 

 Chakman of the Board of Governors of Canterbury College has intimated 

 to a deputation of your Council that it was the intention to open shortly 

 that building vath a similar festival, in which it would be desirable to 

 exhibit for the first time a whole series of objects of artistic and scientific 

 interest, which your Council thought could be made available for om' 

 anniversary meeting, we have thought it would be better to unite for such 

 an occasion our efi^orts with those of the Board of Governors, so that the 

 opening ceremony might be of still greater interest. I have no doubt that 

 you will fully agree with this view of yom* Council, which was only adopted 

 after careful consideration. Instead of passing in review the scientific j)ro- 

 gress during the last year, as far as the accounts given of it have reached 

 New Zealand, I have thought it more expedient to speak of a few local 

 subjects, of Avhich the remarkable rock paintings in the Weka Pass Eanges, 

 near the Waikari, and of which Mr. T. S. Cousins has made a conscientious 

 copy for the Canterbury Museum, is, without doubt, of the highest interest. 

 I have much pleasure in exhibiting these drawings to-night, as well as 

 another, copied by the Eev. James W, Stack, in the Opihi country. 

 Description of it will be found in A]3pendix 2 to my addi-ess. But, before 

 doing so, I shall treat of two other topics, to the consideration of which we 

 might weU devote some of the time at our disposal. 



First, I wish to allude to the intra-Mercurial planet Vulcan, the exist- 

 ence of which is more than hypothetical, although it would be very desirable 

 to have this proved beyond a doubt. You are doubtless aware that the 

 great French astronomer, Le Verrier, when occupied with an investigation 

 into the theory of the orbit of Mercury, found that a certain error in the 

 assumed motion of its perihelion could only be accounted for by supposmg 

 that the mass of Venus is at least one-tenth greater than it was assumed 

 from the measurements taken, or that there exists some unknown planet or 

 planets between Mercury and the Sun, by which a disturbing action is 

 produced. Le Verrier, without oft^ering an opinion upon these hypotheses, 

 towards the end of 1859 communicated them to the scientific world. 



Shortly after this statement had been made, Lescarbault, a French 

 physician living at Orgeres, announced that, on March 26th of the same 

 year, he had observed the passage across the sun's disc of what he thought 

 might be a ncvr planet, but had not liked to pubhsh this discovery before he 



