Fifth Meeting: 9th September, 1896.
Mr. R. C. Harding, Vice-president, in the chair.

Papers.—1. “Australian Weather-charts and New Zealand Storms,” with diagrams and charts, by Major-General Schaw, C.B., R.E. (Transactions, p, 61.)

Sir J. Hector said General Schaw deserved thanks for the heavy task he had undertaken in searching through the hundreds of weather-charts that were filed in this office. Without a much larger meteorological staff it was impossible to turn them to proper account. They were the result of an expenditure contributed by all the colonies, but New Zealand contributed only a small share. The information was exchanged by telegraph daily, and each of the colonies prepared a weather-chart similar to those exhibited, which were the Queensland charts: The speaker explained how, about fifteen years ago, after several conferences, he had prepared diagrams showing all the usual forms of isobars—twenty fox Australia and twenty-four for New Zealand. These were numbered, and the numbers for each day were interchanged by cable. Stereotyped blocks of these diagrams had been supplied to all the principal newspapers, and for some time they were used, but now they were not so that the New Zealand public no longer got any benefit from the daily telegrams, and the old-fashioned and obsolete method of weather-warnings had been resorted to by the newspapers. In some respects he differed from the General's views. Although it was convenient to treat all wind variations as closed curves, there was reason for believing that this was only true for the tropical circular storms, and to a modified extent for those in the Northern Hemisphere. In our south temperate latitudes the weather-changes were most frequently curves open to the south—that was, without easterly winds. The pressure-changes advanced eastward in great waves that died out as they approached the great sub-tropical areas of high pressure. In the advancing or east side of the wave the wind was north-west, and the barometer fell rapidly, while on the following or western side the wind was south-west and the barometer rose rapidly. The speaker illustrated this by the curves of the self-registering barometer, for the month of February, 1895, at Wellington, Dunedin, and on board the “Hinemoa” when at the southern islands. The curves showed that four great dips took place during the month, and that these intervened between north-west and south-west winds, there being no indication of the closing-in of the curves by easterly winds in the far south. Such intrumental curves were more trustworthy than isobars, which were necessarily to a large extent conjectural, and were therefore more useful for tracing the weather-changes. He thought we must not cling too rigidly to the theory of circular movements of the atmosphere in southern latitudes.

Mr. Hudson said the members must feel indebted to both General Schaw and Six James Hector for the valuable information they had given on this most interesting subject of weather forecasting.