8 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 92 



"As original records of an observation are trustworthy in propor- 

 tion as they have been presented in their first crude state, I endeavor 

 to give the impressions as they rose in my mind, and will comment on 

 them later. My first impression, then, of the corona was, * It is not 

 so bright as those I have seen before ' ; my second, ' but it is far 

 more extended.' I had before me a sheet of drawing-paper with a 

 |-inch circle on it tO' represent the sun, and on this I traced an out- 

 line ( Plate 3, Fig. i ) of what I then saw, before the eye had recov- 

 ered its sensibility. The sun was surrounded by a narrow ring — 

 hardly more than a line — of vivid light, presenting to the naked eye 

 no trace of structure ; which faded with great suddenness into a nebu- 

 lous luminosity that at first appeared to extend to a distance of about 

 two and one-half solar diameters all around 



" There were but a few moments left when I turned to the telescope. 

 It happened to be directed toward the northern part of the sun. I 

 adjusted the eye-piece for distinct vision, which appeared excellent, 

 but the view after this lasted, I think, not more than four or five 

 seconds before totality was over. What I saw thus momentarily was 

 not in the least what I expected. If there were any structure in the 

 very inner corona, it had escaped me when I had searched for it in 

 a previous eclipse (Jeres, in 1870). It is true that the sky was hazy 

 on that occasion, and that on this it was exquisitely clear. Now what 

 I saw in this brief view was a surprisingly definite filamentary struc- 

 ture " somewhat coarser and decidedly more sharply defined than I 

 have ever seen filaments in the photosphere, not disposed radially, or 

 only so in the rudest sense, sharpest and much the brightest close to 

 the disc, fading rapidly away into invisibility at a distance of five 

 minutes of arc or more (possibly in some cases of ten). The salient 

 point to me was this very remarkable definiteness and precision of 

 these forms, and this impression, made on my mind in that too brief 

 moment, is reproduced in this sketch (Plate 3, Fig. 3), taken from 

 one made within ten minutes of the event. It is in no way a ' picture ' 

 but a reproduction of the original memorandum of the first impres- 



^ The action which produces these definite forms goes on over the surface of a 

 sphere, in reality, and not a disc, and they are doubtless presented to us under 

 all possible foreshortenings, and, questionless, lie one behind and across another, 

 so that, a priori one would expect they would obscure one another, and that such 

 definiteness would not, in fact, exist. But, to me, the actual appearance was very 

 much like that which we might have if the sun were not a globe at all, but a flat 

 disc, fringed with such threads. Doubtless, there was really an intricate cross- 

 hatching of them, and various obscurer forms might have been made out with 

 time for study. 



