RECORDS OF MEETINGS. 707 



a very few of the very learned, was probably consigned to the waste 

 basket by most of the recipients, and has at all events become ex- 

 tremely rare. It is in fact lacking in Professor Pierce's own set of 

 volumes of which I am now the fortunate possessor. 



Such a fate was not to be feared for the account of our "first 

 research." There must always be a strong popular interest in a total 

 eclipse of the Sun, especially if it occurs so near at hand that it may 

 be seen without a long and expensive journey. 



Nowadays we all anxiously scan the newspapers to learn whether 

 our observers, sent half round the world, perhaps, to accomplish their 

 utmost in a short five minutes, have had a clear sky at the critical 

 moment. 



The first eclipse of the sun in the present century occurred on the 

 18th of May, 1911. Its track passed over the Indian Ocean and it was 

 successfully observed at the Island of Mauritius and in Sumatra at 

 about noon of that date. Had direct telegraphic communication been 

 established, this success might easily have been known in Boston in 

 time to be announced in the morning papers and read at our breakfast 

 tables on that same 18th day of May. What would the Rev. Samuel 

 Williams, Hollisian Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy, 

 have thought of this modern miracle ! — familiar though he doubtless 

 was with the times of Hezekiah, when the Lord did the thing that he 

 had spoken: "Behold, I will bring again the shadow of the degrees, 

 which is gone down in the sundial of Ahaz, ten degrees backward. 

 So the sun returned ten degrees by which degrees it was gone down." 



I select the name of Samuel Williams from the list of Reverend 

 Professors who one hundred and thirty years ago shed a lustre upon 

 the University and formed a considerable part of the membership of 

 the Academy, because he was naturally chosen to be the leader of 

 their expedition. 



Successor of the gentle and learned Rev. John Winthrop who had 

 died in the previous year, he taught the Astronomy of his day to such 

 undergraduates as were competent to pursue that vigorous study, and 

 from his pupils six were chosen, together with a graduate who had just 

 taken his degree, as assistants in his observations. His own account 

 is as follows : 



" Observations of a solar eclipse, October 27, 1780, made on the 

 east side Oti Long- Island in Penobscot- Bay." 



" A total eclipse of the sun is a curious and uncommon phenome- 

 non. From the principles of Astronomy it is certain that a central 

 eclipse will happen, in some part of the earth, in the course of every 

 year : But it is but seldom that a total eclipse of the sun is seen in 



