The pail system can never compete in completeness with water carriage, but it would be better than the present one in Wellington. For some portions, such as the suburban and hilly parts of this town, it would be specially advantageous, with water carriage for the remaining parts. An outfall for the reclaimed and adjacent portions of the town could be formed as far beyond Pipitea Point as money would permit, and the Te Aro end provided with an outfall towards or at Jerningham Point. The discharge of drains from even a pail system town would not be desirable to have poured into a bay opposite it. Wellington would do well to protect with jealous care the beautiful bay that is its pride and source of prosperity.

Art. V.—Speculations on the Physiological Changes Obtaining in the English Race when Transplanted to New Zealand. By A. K. Newman, M.B. [Read before the Wellington Philosophical Society, 30th Sept., 1876.] Having studied at odd times the changes produced in English people by a residence in this colony, and also peculiarities in their offspring, an account of the points which interested me, and my speculations on these matters, make up this paper. I regret that I have been unable to weld them into a compact mass, and that consequently this paper is not so continuous as is desirable in a communication to a scientific society. Science teaches us that all plants and animals are acted upon by the surrounding conditions—in other phrase, by their environment—and that any change in the environment causes many changes in the organism; and therefore, in studying the changes obtaining in an immigrant, it is absolutely necessary that we should possess some knowledge of the environment. Of the 100,000,000 square miles of water on the globe, 25,000,000 square miles are in the northern, and 75,000,000 square miles—three times as much—in the southern hemisphere. From this vast sheet vapour is constantly rising, and the enormous amount of this vapour is demonstrated by the fact that off Cape Horn, and in other parts of the southern ocean, the barometer stands permanently at a low level, ranging between 28° and 29°—i.e., an inch or more below that in the northern hemisphere. Dr. Ballot says that in about 40° N. the average barometric pressure is over 760 millimetres, but in 50° S. it falls to 750 millimetres. These observations are deduced from an immense mass of barometric readings. In New Zealand we see a steady lowering of pressure from Mongonui, in the north, to Invercargill, in the south, and the presence of this vapour