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Transactions. — Astronomy. 



bubble and boil like a spring of molten silver. This appearance 

 was produced by the blending together of the large prominences 

 and the sun's reappearing disc ; and not for several seconds, 

 perhaps, did the latter assert itself, assume its true shape, and, 

 by its superior luminosity, cast the protuberance into obscurity, 

 and substitute its ordinary beams for the temporary or tem- 

 porarily-perceptible coronal rays. During the obscuration, stars 

 were plainly seen by those whose attention was not already 

 bespoken by something more unusual. I saw Jupiter very dis- 

 tinctly. The rushing of wind, as from all points of the compass, 

 remarked upon by one of our local newspapers, I certainly 

 did not experience. The fall of temperature along the belt of 

 totality, instead of causing wind thitherwards, would rather 

 operate to produce motion of the air in precisely the opposite 

 direction. But, as already observed, there was really no wind 

 at all, but over everything the stillness as of death." 



The Bishop of Nelson describes the eclipse as observed from 

 a hill near Nelson : — 



" The sensible progress of the eclipse at first seemed slow, 

 but at the critical and crucial moment it appeared cruelly 

 rapid. The body of the moon crept on over the left or 

 western limb of the sun, and while it was about half over, there 

 was a very sensible diminution in the light. It began to be a 

 eold and silvery light, and the absence of yellow light seemed 

 more and more marked, till the not unfamiliar lunar crescent- 

 shape was assumed by the sun ; and this stage was the period of 

 quite a peculiar phenomenon in the appearance of the hills below 

 the sun. Each one of the many rough furrows of valleys, divided 

 by ridges of bush, became dark and black in shade ; but each 

 ridge was distinctly marked by a yellowish-green light, so re- 

 markable as to form the subject of notice by me to the by- 

 standers, who all acquiesced in the recognition of the decided 

 and noticeable peculiarity of the appearance. It was most 

 marked, and fortunately so much so as to be capable of repro- 

 duction. Possibly there may be a somewhat similar appear- 

 ance under the crescent moon. 



"As totality came near, and one's attention was confined 

 almost exclusively to the sun, it seemed to me that the crescent 

 was divided into one or two elongated portions of light, and then, 

 subsequently, that these elongated portions were divided up into 

 what reminded me of the cogs of a wheel, or rather the little 

 blocks of different metal that are planted in the rim of the 

 compensating balance of a good watch or chronometer. I suppose 

 this appearance to be that described as " Bailey's beads." They 

 appeared to me to exist for only a very short time indeed, but 

 they were distinct cogs of light, over little more than a third of 

 the edge of the sun, on the eastern or lower side. 



"It then appeared to me as if the sun, or dark body of moon, 



