378 Professor C. Piazzi Smyth's 



hollows, and the fact of the increase of the irradiation with 

 the intensity of the light, and the rapidly growing bright- 

 ness of the sun's surface from the circumference toward 

 the centre, has been so very satisfactorily explained by Pro- 

 fessor Baden Powell, in his excellent paper in the Memoirs 

 of the Royal Astronomical Society on Irradiation, that they 

 can hardly be considered in future subjects for wonder, or 

 even for observation, at a moment when there are so many 

 other phenomena of a more important and less understood 

 nature appearing. 



They, the beads, have always hitherto, we believe, consti- 

 tuted telescopic phenomena, but an instance was recently 

 given us where they were seen by the naked eye ; the case 

 was described as a curious appearance seen during the annular 

 eclipse of 1836, by Mr J. Campbell, W.S., and a friend, and cir- 

 cumstantially stated without any idea of what the cause might 

 have been, and therefore in a very unexceptionable manner. 

 While the moon was passing across the face of the sun, and 

 had almost gained the second limb, a little black jet was seen 

 to shoot out from the moon to the limb of the sun it was ap- 

 proaching, and then again, after a very brief instant, the 

 whole limb of the moon joined that of the sun, and the annular 

 part of the eclipse had terminated. The little dark jet here 

 mentioned, was evidently one of the mountains of the moon, 

 reaching the sun's edge first, w^hile the irradiation of light, 

 bending round the flatter parts of the moon, made them seem 

 further than they really were from the sun's limb ; but the 

 intensity of the sun's light on its borders decreasing so very 

 rapidly, and the consequent irradiation likewise, tended to 

 increase the apparent quickness of the motion of the moon's 

 edge, and caused the obliteration of the sun's light at last to 

 be so very rapid. 



The red prominences. — These appear to have been well seen 

 and observed too, and to have been decidedly proved to belong 

 to the sun, and not to the moon. On the occasion of 1842, 

 they took observers so much by surprise, that they were not 

 prepared with any instrumental means to ascertain the na- 

 ture of these strange appearances, and the several accounts 

 varied alarmingly as to the number, size, and position of 



