12 ARMSTRONG — LAST SOLAR ECLIPSE. [Vol. vil. 



(Mr, Pogson's), at Sboloor (Mr, Jannsen's), at Jaffna and a 

 few other places of less interest. 



At the first named Station circumstaDces prevailed which 

 were disastrous, as far as observation was concerned ; at all the 

 others, however, complete success attended the work undertaken. 



The almost total failure, in the matter of trustworthy obser- 

 vations, of the Eclipse — mainly visible in Northern Africa, 

 Sicily and Spain — of the precedin;^ year had left physicists in a 

 position of mucli doubt and perplexity as to a number of very 

 grave questions of science. Those, therefore, who were interested 

 in the solution of these problems were literally on tip-toe of ex- 

 pectation as to what the Eclipse of which we purpose to speak 

 mio'ht reveal. And it is encouraoini>; to know that the result 

 has not been disappointing, and that we may now say that the 

 questions that required an answer have received one, and that 

 many differences of opinion among solar observers may thus be 

 considered as finally decided and put at rest. 



It is not our intention at this time to attempt anything more 

 than a passing notice of a few points that are of chiefest interest, 

 and upon which light has been thrown by the observational 

 work of the late Eclipse ; and among these will stand preeuii- 

 nent such observations as deal with the nature and origin of the 

 Corona, — that sheeny mane of striated and radial structure which, 

 during an Eclipse, surrounds and adorns the Sun's hidden disc, 

 and whose dazzling brilliancy in its more immediate neighbourhood 

 shades off, at a remoter distance, into a halo of silvery grey and 

 hazy indefinitcncss of vast dimensions. 



Next in importance to these mnj, perhaps, be regarded those 

 observations which have to -do with the extent and position of the 

 Sun's cliroinatosphcre (Respighi) — that gaseous envelope, that is, 

 to whose absorptive powers upon the emenations of the light- 

 giving Photosphere is due the presence of the dark lines of 

 Fraiinhofer in the Solar Spectrum. And it may be as well to 

 mention that the reason why so much curiosity centres in any spec- 

 troscopic observations that it maybe possible to make of this enve- 

 lope, unassociatcd irifh any other of the Sun's surroundings, is 

 owing to the fact that its existence was first suggested by Pro- 

 fessor Stokes, in 1849, on purely theoretical grounds, and was 

 afterwards experimental!}" demonstrated in the reversal of the 

 Sodium Spectrum by Kirchoff, but nevertheless its presence had 

 not, before the two last eclipses, been, by actual observation, de- 

 monstrated. 



