MAGNETIC SURVEYS.

Auckland Star, Volume XLVII, Issue 49, 26 February 1916, Page 8

MAGNETIC SURVEYS.

WORK IN THE.DOMINION, (By Telsgrajh. Correspondent;); CHRISTCHURCH, this day. The Carnegie Institution at Washington is continuing its work in connection: with terrestrial magnetism in New Zealand. The magnetic observatory in Christchureh makes the city a place of unusual importance to officers of the Institution, which has sent a member of the staff (Mr. W. Parkinson) to spend a few weeks here completing data which will be forwarded to Washington and will be used in the general work of the magnetic survey of the globe. Mr. Parkinson is busy at the observatory now, but later he intends to visit several magnetic stations established by New Zealand in other parts of the Dominion. Included in the list of these places are stations near Wellington, near the Cook i Strait coast, and Rotorua. He may also establish several new magnetic stations, including some in Southern Lakes district, and one on the Great Barrier Island. Mr. Parkinson expects to complete his work by the first week in April, when the Institution's magnetic survey vessel Carnegie, which left Lyttelton at the end of last year, will return to port. The vessel set out to make the voyage round the globe as close as possible to the Antarctic Continent. The Institution lias had observations made in Australia and in the Islands of the Pacific Ocean, and all this part of the world has [been covered. Mr. Parkinson has been j engaged in West Australia, where he I had a strenuous time travelling along j unfrequented roads, often in the company of natives. He went round the southern I coast of West Australia as far as the boundary with South Australia, and travelled inland by way of Kalgoorlie, and then trekked north to the Northern Coast. The north-western districts he describes as a great desert, mostly of I spinifex and sand, and an utterly imposi sible place from an agricultural point of j view. The natives in the district are I quite uncivilised and uncultured, and I they cling to their old ideas- and ens- ! tome. He thinks that they will graduj ally die out before the advance of civiliI sation.