180 SCIENTIFIC RECORD FOR 1884. 



THE SUN. 



xS'o/ar eclipses. — An interesting investigation respecting two ancient 

 eclipses was comirmnicated by Herr Bernhard Schwarz to the Vienna 

 Academy last April. The first of these eclipses is one referred to in a 

 fragment of Archilochus preserved by Stobaeus {Florilegiuni ex. 10). 



Professor von Oppolzer had already called attention to this passage, 

 and suggested that it probably referred to a solar eclipse which occurred 

 on the 6th of April, B. C 648, in ordinary or historical chronology (647 

 in scientific chronology). Herr Schwarz has made a very careful cal- 

 culation of all the solar eclipses which took place during the life-time of 

 Archilochus, between the years B. 0. 700 and 640. He finds that the 

 only choice lies between an eclipse which was annular in the Grecian 

 Archipelago in the afternoon of June 27, B. C. 661, and the above, 

 which was total in the morning of April 6, B. C. 648. The probability 

 is that the eclipse of 648 is the one mentioned by the poet. 



The other eclipse discussed by Herr Schwarz is mentioned in an As- 

 syrian inscription of Asurbanipal, to which attention was directed by 

 Dr. Jacob Krall. The inscription may be thus translated : " In the 

 month Tammuz an eclipse took place of the Lord of Day, the god of 

 light. The setting sun thereupon left off shining, and I in like manner 

 put off beginning the war against Elam during [here a gap in the textj 

 days." Taking into account all the circumstances here mentioned, there 

 can scarcely be a doubt that the eclipse referred to was the earlier of 

 the two before mentioned (June 27, B. C. 661), which, annular in the 

 Grecian Archipelago, was visible as a large partial eclipse a little before 

 sunset in Assyria and Persia. (AtJienwum.) 



Transit of Venus, 1882. — On the occasion of the transit of Venus of 

 1882 the commission of the Belgian Government, under the direction 

 Dr. J. C. Houzeau, placed its chief reliance upon observations made 

 with a new form of heliometer, in which, by employing half objectives 

 of unequal focal length, the images of the Sun and Venns were nearly 

 equal, allowing an observation of the angular distance of the centers 

 of these two bodies to be taken by a single measure. With instruments 

 of this pattern, set up in the southern hemisphere at Santiago de Chili, 

 and in the northern at San Antonio, Tex., a sufficiently large number 

 of measures were made to afford a fair test of the worth of the uaw 

 method. The facility with which this instrument can be employed in 

 work of precision is shown well enough by the large number of obser- 

 vations obtained at the Santiago station, where no clouds interfered 

 with the progress of the measurements. Doctor Houzeau has completed 

 the discussion of the work of the two expeditions, and the results are 

 publitshed as the first fascicule of the fifth volume of the Annales de 

 V Observatoire Royale de Bruxelles. The value of the solar parallax which 

 he derives is 8".911,or about one-tenth of a second larger than that 

 now regarded as the true value, 



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