THE SUN'S LONG STREAMERS. 663 



The tapering ray marked No. 1 was the first seen by him. He says 

 he saw it on his first glance at the corona. It then seemed to extend 

 about three times the diameter of the sun ; but in a minute or so, as 

 the observer's eyes became accustomed to the sight, he was able to 

 trace its tapering end to a distance of six diameters of the sun's disk. 

 " Its sides were straight lines, its axis passing slightly below the sun's 

 center. Its light was an exceedingly faint and delicate white, appar- 

 ently overlaid or intermingled with the blue of the atmosphere. I saw 

 no striation, texture, or variation of light. There was no decided in- 

 crease of brightness in that part of the ray near the sun's edge, nor in 

 the axis of the beam, the delicate light continuing uniform up to the 

 corona, in whose glare it was lost." We must note here two points. 

 In all probability the words " in a minute or so " are used in their col- 

 loquial sense ior presently^ because the whole totality did not last two 

 minutes and a half, and in the course of that time Professor Abbe noted 

 all the features of the corona six several times. Secondly, we find that, 

 both in the " Daily News " and in " Nature," Professor Abbe is de- 

 scribed as tracing the rays to a distance of six degrees from the eclipsed 

 sun, not six diameters only ; so that, as the sun's apparent diameter is 

 little more than half a degree, these accounts would suggest that he 

 saw the rays to double the distance described in the " Colorado Daily 

 Gazette." But there seems little reason to doubt that the accounts 

 given in the " Daily News" and "Nature," which constitute in reality 

 but one account, seeing that they both came from the same source, are 

 incorrect; for the account sent to the Colorado paper was written by 

 Professor Abbe himself. It contains an illustration from a drawing of 

 his own (reproduced above), which agrees with his description. More- 

 over, we received the paper directly from Professor Abbe ; and un- 

 questionably he would have struck out the word "diameters" and sub- 

 stituted " degrees " if he had really seen the ray extending to the 

 greater distance. Note also that the word " diameter " is used through- 

 out the descriptions of other rays. 



The ray marked 2 was seen as soon as 1. Its bounding edges, di- 

 verging from each other, but not from the sun's center, produced a 

 somewhat fan-shaped ray. "When first seen," says Abbe, "I esti- 

 mated its outer limit at one diameter, but subsequently traced it to a 

 diameter and a half from the sun. Its left-hand edge appeared some- 

 what sharper and brighter than the right-hand edge. With this excep- 

 tion the light was very uniformly distributed throughout its surface, 

 fading away rapidly at its outer end. It also remained changeless 

 throughout the totalitv." 



No. 3 was also seen at the same time as No. 1. " It was narrower 

 and shorter than No. 1 : its estimated length, three diameters. It 

 broadened at its base, like No. 1, and had the same uniform tint and 

 intensity," 



No. 4 " was not noticed at all until the totality was half over. Its 



