io8 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



pable management and all wrong. Every piece of apparatus should 

 be set up, adjusted, tested and used at the home station; and time 

 should be available thereafter for making modifications in apparatus, 

 methods and program, and for retrial. With every possible prepara- 

 tion made before leaving home, the astronomer will find his time occu- 

 pied at the eclipse station in solving the ninety and nine local problems 

 whose coming is sure, but whose nature can not be foreseen. To install 

 half a dozen instruments in a fixed observatory so that they will work 

 satisfactorily, one at a time, and at the observer's leisure, is not a 

 small problem. To construct a temporary observatory in an out of 

 the way corner of the earth, to mount the eight or ten instruments, and 

 to train the dozen or more assistants so that all the instruments and 

 all the men will work together satisfactorily at the fixed instant of 

 totality, is a problem of a very different order. The point which I 

 wish to emphasize is that preparations for observing the eclipse of 

 August, 1905, should begin early in 1904. 



