110 CORRESPONDENCE. 



ceptio visus, but a somewhat similar appearance was witnessed by 

 the celebrated MacLaurin in 1 737* immediately before the comple- 

 tion of the annulus, towards the middle of the moon's circumference, 

 not yet in contact with the disc of the sun. 



During the period of the eclipse, insect life was still and motion- 

 less ; the birds of the air flew near the ground, and there was a 

 peculiar solemnity in the silence which reigned around me — un- 

 broken save by the song of the lark, which rose at intervals : even 

 the " attic warbler" was mute, however, during the maximum ob- 

 scuration. At the close of the eclipse numerous insects appeared, 

 and the lark soared higher with its welcome note. The atmosphere 

 had been almost free from clouds, but floating cumuli collected and 

 condensed ; and toward the close of the eclipse had rallied, as if in 

 sympathy round the standard of the sun. The diminution of light 

 was by no means so great as many had expected ; no stars were vi- 

 sible — Venus, perhaps, might have been seen had not clouds at the 

 time obscured her path. The light, during the greatest obscuration 

 of the sun, was quite peculiar ; nature assumed a lurid aspect, and 

 the sea, too, had a different livery from its usual tone of colour. It 

 was not a twilight hue, — it was ' c itself alone," such as I have seen 

 in looking through a Claude Lorraine glass. The Prophet's lan- 

 guage describes it — " The light was neither clear nor dark. It was 

 not day nor night.'* During the solar eclipse of 1820, I was among 

 the Serpentine rocks near Portsoy, Scotland, and the diminution of 

 light on that occasion seemed greater than in the present instance. 



My distance from the tide-gauge did not enable me to consult it 

 during the eclipse ; but the usual height of the tide would have had 

 its maximum on the 15th ultimo at 3h. 43' : it did not, however, 

 begin perceptibly to recede until four o'clock p. m., if it did not ra- 

 ther continue to flow so long. A death-like silence seemed to per- 

 vade the great deep, but about the maximum obscuration of the sun, 

 I heard a wave below me M utter its voice," and " dash hoarse along 

 the shore." 



A friend informed me, while at Horncastle, that the tulips and 

 anemonies in his 'garden there, shut their flowers during the eclipse, 

 his bees ceased to work, the Thrush carolled his vespers or " even 

 song," and the poultry retired to roost. At Hull the maximum of 

 temperature in sunshine was 86° F., and the maximum in shade 

 74° F. The minimum in sunshine during the eclipse was 64°5, and 

 in the shade 64° F. At 3h. 27' p. m. the thermometer in sunshine 

 was 1° 30' lower, there than in the shade: and a friend at Sheffield 

 told me a similar phenomenon was observed in that town. I am inclin- 



