ASTRONOMY IN AMERICA. 79 



has partaken of the general character of official astronomical research,, 

 we may consider here some of the special astronomical occasions at 

 which the observers trained at Washington have assisted. 



The total eclipse of August 7, 1869, was closely observed by par- 

 ties from the observatory. Prof. Asaph Hall and Mr. J. A. Rogers 

 proceeded to Alaska ; Profs. Newcomb, Harkness, and Eastman, to 

 Iowa ; and Mr. F. W. Bardwell, to Tennessee. The observations made 

 on this occasion were of great value and interest. The solar promi- 

 nences had had their real nature determined during the eclipse of 

 August, 1868; and the American observers were not content to re- 

 peat the observations then made, but extended the method of spectro- 

 scopic analysis to the corona. They also obtained photographs of the 

 colored prominences. The work accomplished by the Washington 

 observers, together with the observations made by Dr. Curtis, Mr. 

 J. Homer Lane, of Washington City, Ind., and Mr. W. S. Gilman, Jr., 

 of New York, and General Myer, U. S. A., form a quarto volume of 

 217 pages, with twelve illustrations. Of this valuable and inter- 

 esting volume, 3,500 copies were printed by joint resolution of Con- 

 gress. 



The superintendent of the Washington Observatory was not con- 

 tent with this. " Believing that the experience of its officers in their 

 observations of the eclipse of 1869 should be availed of for the further 

 elucidation of the subjects involved in such phenomena, he addressed 

 the Navy Department upon the subject of their employment in Europe 

 in observing the eclipse of December, 1870; the department promptly 

 detailed the professors who had been the observers of the previous 

 year;" and it was doubtless through the energy thus displayed by 

 Rear-Admiral Sands that other skillful American astronomers were 

 enabled to cross the Atlantic for the purpose of observing that im- 

 portant eclipse. Unfavorable weather prevented observations of this 

 eclipse at some of the best stations, but the American observers suc- 

 ceeded in establishing the accuracy of the observations made in 1869, 

 and to them must be attributed in large part the definite demonstra- 

 tion of the fact, which though now admitted was then much disputed, 

 that the corona is a solar phenomenon, and not due to the illumination 

 of our own atmosphere only. 



The part taken by the Washington Observatory in preparing for 

 and cooperating in the observation of the transit of Venus, on De- 

 ceinber 8, 1874, is too recent to need full description in this place. I 

 may be permitted, however, to dwell with special commendation on 

 the manner in which American astronomers devoted themselves at 

 that time to a task which they might fairly have thought the business 

 of their European brethren. A transit of Venus is to occur in 1882 

 which will be specially American, being visible wholly or in part from 

 every portion of the United States ; and, if America had reserved her 

 energies for that occasion, no complaint could reasonably have been 



