THE 



CANADIAN NATURALIST 



AND 



ON THE PARTIAL ECLIPSE OF THE SUN, 

 August 7tit, 1869. 



By C. Smallwood, M.D., LL.D., D.C.L. 



The varied and beautiful phenomena presented in an Eclipse 

 of the Sun, form an important era in the life and study of the 

 astronomer. They form a sort of triumph of his science, a winning- 

 post, planted, as it were, in the distant confines of space — a 

 point of time graven on the history of the past — a land-mark 

 placed as a beacon for the future— and a song of praise to Him, 

 whose power and might are so manifest in the " Heavens that de- 

 clare His glory, and in the moon and stars that He h;is ordained." 



The occurrence of a total eclipse gives rise to appearances 

 which have excited the admiration and wonder of the inhabitants 

 of the earth in all ages ; but the increase of knowledge, and 

 a more definite theory of the properties of light, and the various 

 improved and modern appliances of science for the investigation 

 of these phenomena, have shed a bright lustre around these 

 observations of a character at once subliuie and of intense interest. 



No experiments since the days of Newton, but the discovery 

 by Fraunhofer of the dark lines in the solar spectrum, with the 

 more recent invention of the spectroscope, could have led to those 

 results which the total eclipse of last year, 1868, so fully deter- 

 mined, and which would seem to afford such positive proofs of 

 the composition and nature of those protuberances, which, up to 

 that time, had caused so much speculation among men of science. 



Vol IV. R j^,j. 3, 



