Wellington Philosophical Society. session of 1869. Proceedings.

Transactions and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New Zealand, Volume 2, 1869, Unnumbered Page

Wellington Philosophical Society. session of 1869. Proceedings. Second Annual Meeting. February 9, 1869. J. C. Crawford, F. G. S., Vice President, in the chair. Abstract of Report of the Council for the Annual Meeting. “There are now 117 members, from whom subscriptions to the amount of £133 7a. have been received. In accordance with a resolution of the council the subscriptions of eight members residing in other provinces have been returned to them at their request, or more strictly speaking, have been paid over to the treasurers of societies similar to this, in those provinces. “The expenditure of the Society during the past year (and since its commencement under the name of the New Zealand Society, in November, 1867) has amounted to £84 18s. 2d., the details of which are shown in the accounts laid on the table. “During the past year there have been six general meetings of the Society, of which an account will appear in the ‘Proceedings of the New Zealand Institute,’ now in course of publication. * In future only those persons who join the Society before the 1st of October, will be entitled to receive a copy of the ‘Proceedings’ of the year, as subscriptions paid after the 1st of October are considered as being paid in advance for the following year, in accordance with rule 9. “There have been seven meetings of the council during the year. Of these, and of the general meetings, minutes have been kept by the Secretary as required by the rules. These are at any time open to the inspection of members.” Report agreed to by the Council, January 29, 1869. Robert Pharazyn, Hon. Sec. In reply to questions, the Secretary stated that the balance in hand from last year amounted to the sum of £48 8s. 10d., and that only a few small accounts for advertising were outstanding, while, as would be seen from the accounts, all the larger items, with the exception of the contribution of one-sixth of the income of the Society to the Institute would not be annual charges. Election of Officers for 1869: President—Sir George Grey, K. C. B.; Vice Presidents—His Honor I. E. Featherston, M. D., Superintendent of Wellington, J. C. Crawford, F. G. S.; Council—W. T. L. Travers, F. L. S., J. Hector, M. D., F. R. S., W. B. Mantell, F. G. S., J. Kebbell, R. Pharazyn, F. R. G. S.; Hon. Secretary—R. Pharazyn. Dr. Hector laid on the table the third annual report of the Colonial Museum and Laboratory, also a “Notice of an egg of the great Moa (Dinornis gigantea) containing remains of an embryo chick,” communicated by himself to the Zoological Society of London. Dr. Hector then gave an account of several recent additions made to the collection in the Museum, and called attention to the fact that the nests of New Zealand birds, of which a collection had been received from Mr. T. H. Potts, were very imperfectly known, that of the Huia not having yet been discovered. Some interesting extracts were read by Dr. Hector from a letter of Captain Hutton's, describing the present state of the Thames Gold Fields. Attention was also directed to a very fine collection of corals dredged by Captain Fairchild, of the steamer “Sturt,” some of which appear to be of considerable importance

in a scientific point of view, from the fact of their being apparently identical with corals hitherto only found as fossils in the older Tertiary rocks. Papers read:—(1.) “On the Sand-worn Stones of Evans' Bay,” by W. T. L. Travers, F. L. S. (See ante, p. 247.) In this the author gave an account of the mode in which certain curiously shaped stones, which appeared to be “flint implements,” were formed by the cutting action of sand blown by the wind across a line of boulders between Evans' and Lyall's Bays.