[2] In 1875, he was transferred to the office staff, engaged on special survey work for the department, which included investigation of sites for the Beetaloo and Barossa reservoirs.
[2] In his last years he was almost totally blind, but with the aid of a young secretary was able to continue exercising his mathematical and curatorial skills.
This was ordered upon the ground that names of places chronicle scenes, sights, actions, wisdom, folly, and fate, and are the people's heritage.
Camden (A.D. 1856), quoting from Porphyry, a learned Athenian (A.D. 278), notes that barbarous names are emphatic and concise, and considers it the duty of an enlightened people to preserve them, as fixing ideas, images, or conceptions of preceding races.
What is here quoted appears to be equally true of names which the Australian aborigines have applied to the distinctive features of their trackless home.
[1]He also wrote leaflets or booklets on:[2] He also prepared a comprehensive work on geodesy and practical astronomy (never published), and contributed biographical and historical articles to the Public Service Review, of which he was an editor.