62 TOURNAL OF SCIENCE. 
provement in the working of the Institute. The museum is 
crammed with material, much of it of great value, which cannot 
be properly shown to the public, nor studied by those desirous 
of doing so, simply for want of room and of cases. The collec- 
tions are chaotic. .When one steps across Museum Street in 
Wellington, and sees the provision which our thankful represen- 
tatives make for their own use and comfort in the fine library of 
Parliament House, and which, by-the-bye, they consider too 
valuable for the good people of Wellington (so many of them the 
paid servants of the Government) to make use of, one feels 
ashamed that the Colonial scientific collections should be treated 
as they are. Evidently a great, change is wanted here. A new 
and commodious building of some less inflammable material than 
the present ; a separate annual grant sufficient to keep the col- 
lection in good order and give space to the new materials con- 
stantly coming in, and the placing of the whole under the charge 
of a curator, who shall have nothing else to do, are the most pro- 
minent wants of this department. As it exists at present, the 
Colonial Museum is valueless for most of the purposes for which 
a museum should exist. 
The geological survey appears to be progressing satisfac- 
torily, and this is to be expected, as it is the special line of work 
to further which the Director was appointed. 
The meteorological statistics are, however, of somewhat ques- 
tionable value. Returns, we are told, are received from four 
second-class and thirty third-class stations in the Colony. The 
latter must always be accepted with a certain amount of hesita- 
tion, unless the stations are thoroughly inspected, a work which 
would be very expensive. But of what value are the returns 
from the second-class stations? I could name one where the 
anemometer stands between two not widely-separated young 
trees, and so placed that it must receive only a share of every sou’- 
wester that blows! I rather think that in another place the 
thermometer stand is on the roof of a brick building. Returns 
from instruments so placed would be dearly bought if they cost 
nothing, for they are worse than valueless,—they are misleading. 
Surely in the shipping interest alone, a good meteorological ser- 
vice is wanted, even were it conducted only on a small scale. 
In regard to the publications of the Institute, thereis again room 
for considerable improvement. As to the papers published in the 
Transactions, a fairly judicious supervision appears to be made, 
for although—to take Vol. XV. as an example—there are a few 
papers which make no addition to our knowledge in any sense, 
yet it has to be remembered that in a young country, removed 
as this is from the old established intellectual centres of the world, 
we must seek a lower standard than that of a Royal or Linnean 
Society. The “ Regulations regarding Publications” provide 
that “the Institute shall have power to reject any papers read 
before any of the incorporated societies ;” but seeing that the In- 
stitute is a soulless body, the power of rejection appears to lie 
practically in the hands of the manager. There can be no doubt 
