﻿392 Proceedings. 



Wednesdays until 9 p.m., so as to afford persons engaged in business during 

 the day an opportunity of becoming acquainted with its contents ; it was 

 hoped tlie experiment would prove successful. A series of instructive lectures 

 was also in contemplation. 



1. The President invited remarks on any of the papers read at the jjrevious 

 meeting. With regard to the paper read by Mr Pearce, " On the Substitution 

 of Vulgar Fractions for Decimals, in the Compilation of Mathematical Tables," 

 he remarked that he had carefully examined that gentleman's calculations and 

 found that in several cases the results given could not be relied upon, as they 

 had evidently been obtained from a series of approximations. Although highly 

 appreciating the great amount of patient labour which Mr. Pearce had bestowed 

 on the subject, he could not anticipaterthat the proposed substitution would be 

 attended with beneficial results. 



Mr. Pearce exhibited further calculations in support of his proposition, and 

 expressed his belief that its adoption would result in a great saving of time, 

 and entail advantages in other directions. 



2. " Description of a Simple Form of Eain-guage," by Archdeacon 

 W. L. Williams. 



(abstract.) 



The writer pointed out that the rain-guages in common use were constructed 

 on some arbitrary scale, and supplied with a measuring glass graduated to 

 hundredths of an inch in proportion to the collecting aperture of the instni- 

 ment ; conseqviently the bi-eakage of the glass disabled the instrument until 

 another could be procured, a matter often involving considerable difficulty and 

 delay, especially in a newly settled country. He proposed to utilize the 

 ordinary ounce glass, which could be readily procured, by adopting a rain- 

 guage with a circular aperture of 10| inches, so that each -^ of an inch of rain 

 would be represented by half an ounce. A simple correction was supplied for 

 the slight error involved in the adaptation. 



Mr. Peacock admitted the value of the form now proposed, but advocated 

 the great superiority of a self-registering guage. 



Mr. Kirk remarked that while fully prepared to admit the advantages 

 afforded by self-registering instruments, he considered they were even more 

 exposed to the risk of accident than the ordinary kind, and were attended with 

 the further disadvantage of extra cost in the first instance. The form now- 

 proposed could readily be manufactured in zinc or copper, so as to be adapted 

 to any kind of receiving vessel, and the ounce glass could be procured from 

 any druggist at a small cost. It supplied a recognised want — a cheap rain- 

 guage for the use of settlers, and was therefore calculated to increase the 

 number of observers of rain- fall which varied in different localities even in this 

 province to a much greater extent than was generally supposed. 



