OVER THE SUN. 247 
tmicrometer, or with vertical and horizontal hairs, as we 
could have wifhed. 
The third of June proved favourable to our withes. 
The air was uncommonly clear, and the fky {ferene. 
About twenty minutes before the tranfit, I began to keep 
my eye fteadily fixed on that part of the fun’s limb, on 
which the planet by calculation was to enter; an affiftant 
counting the clock in the mean time, while another {tood 
by to write down the obfervations. Thus prepared, we 
waited with a kind of agreeable anxiety for the high fa- 
tisfation of feeing Venus on the fun; a fatisfaGtion I had 
once before enjoyed in viewing the tranfit of 1761*, and 
which I knew muft end with that of 1769! The firft im- 
preffion of Venus on the fun, I expected would not ap- 
pear like ,a diftin& well defined black {pot coming on as 
it were in an inftant, but rather like an ill defined mix- 
ture of limbs. The event was agreeable to the conjec- 
ture, for at 2" 30’ 14”, apparent time, I imagined I faw 
a fmall difturbance on the fun’s limb; but the impreflion 
was then fo {mall, irregular and ill defined, that it was 
not till after feveral feconds that I was certain the tranfit 
was begun. But the imprefflion increafing and growing 
more diftinét, I fixed on the time mentioned above as the 
time of the external contact. To obfervers with tele- 
{copes and eyes equally good, and fixed on that part of the 
fun on which the planet entered, I conceive this firft im- 
preflion might have been obferved to an agreement of 5 
or 6 feconds. ‘Though perhaps it might he the contact 
of the atmofphere, rather than of the body of Venus with 
the fun. 
In about ten minutes after the external, I began to look 
for the internal contac?. From the form in which Venus 
appeared, being furrounded with a glimmering light, not 
very diftin@ly defined, I concluded it would be difficult if 
not impoflible to fix upon the precife moment when her 
Li.2 limb 
os 
* At St. Foba’s, in Newfoundland. 
