310 The Past and Coming Transits an^ Arctic Explorations. 



of internal contact, I kept the telescope pointed at the sun's limb. 

 While thus watching, I was astonished to see, most distinctly, the 

 disc of the planet complete, and immediately asked Ijieutenant 

 Shakespear what time remained before contact ; he said a little over 

 five minutes." Mr. Nichol, at Honolulu, writes: "To my astonish- 

 ment, I saw a completion of light round the planet perfectly distinct, 

 and such as I should have said, from previous model contact, was 

 immediately after contact. I got this time I'ecorded as the first obser- 

 vation of contact, by seeing the continuous narrow band of light. I 

 remained looking at it about two minutes, but could not see no 

 instantaneous phenomenon of contact nor black-drop." We supposed 

 the peculiarity due to light from the solar corona ; but, under the con- 

 ditions of observation, that explanation is quite untenable. We can not 

 wonder to find Captain Tupman mentioning that Mr. Nichol recorded 

 a time forty-seven seconds earlier than he did himself Captain 

 Tupman further says, that "there was nothing sudden to note" (as 

 had been expected), "and the complete submergence was so gradual, 

 any one might have recorded ten seconds before I did, and have been 

 probably quite as accurate. My first impression was [that] such an 

 observation could not possess any value. It was something similiar, 

 in principle, to having to decide where the zodiacal light terminates ! 

 bearing in mind, of course, that we expected to get the contact 

 within a second or so of time." 



We can understand, then, the justice of the remark in the recently 

 issued " Eeport to the Board of Visitors of the Greenwich Observa- 

 tory," that while " there has been little annoyance from the dreaded 

 'black-drop'" (Mr. Stone's bugbear), "greater inconvenience and doubt 

 have been caused by the unexpected luminous ring round Venus ; " 

 though why the phenomenon should have been unexpected, when Mas- 

 kelyne, himself an astronomer-royal, recorded it so distinctly in 

 1769, is left unexplained. A very small amount of labor given to the 

 examination of the records of former transits would have prevented 

 this well known phenemenon from taking the observers by surprise; or, 

 perhaps better, would have suggested that contact observations were 

 little likely to be of use. 



It may be well to supplement the above account by quoting the 

 description of the same phenomenon as seen at St. Paul's Island, one 

 of the "inaccessible if not absolutely mythical islands" of our Admi- 

 ralty authorities, which the French (not usually regarded as more 

 essentially nautical than we are) succeeded in occupying.* Immedi- 



* At another of these myths (Camphell Island) the French observers hart bad weather 

 unfortunately, during the transit. But the Germans, at a third mytli, (Aivckland Islaad), 

 saw the whole transit. 



