504 PROFESSOR PIAZZI SMYTH ON THE 
vided, through the Admiralty, with a recommendation from the Swedish ambas- 
sador to the local authorities, which opened the whole coast to us without let or 
hindrance, we landed on the Bue Island, north of Bergen, on the morning of the 
eclipse,—erected the instruments, many of which had kindly been lent to us by 
Admiral Sir F. Beaurort, from the Hydrographical Department, and having the 
zealous co-operation of Messrs Commissioners Hunter, THomson, and UrquHart, 
Mr Secretary Cunrnauam, and Mr Aan Srevenson, the able Engineer of the 
Board, together with the officers of the vessel, we were enabled to detail a dis- 
tinct observer for each and every phenomenon that could well be expected during 
the obscuration. 
Our preparations, however, met the fate but too frequently suffered by 
astronomers in these northern regions, viz., that they were rendered futile through 
clouds; clouds so dense that nothing whatever was seen of the heavenly bodies 
during the middle of the eclipse. But we had a remarkably good opportunity of 
judging of the general effect of a total eclipse; and what with our partial expe- 
rience, and the impartiality with which we could judge of the observations of 
the more delicate phenomena by others, from not having any of our own to bring 
forward,—we are perhaps peculiarly qualified to point out, wherein observers may 
have failed in doing all that it is desired should be done on such an occasion, and 
how they may probably succeed another time. 
The general effect of a total eclipse, however interesting and instructive, as 
one of the most sublime phenomena in nature, may yet appear unconnected with 
the more scientific portion of the observations; and so it is directly, but indi- 
rectly it has the greatest influence. For its effects on the minds of men are so 
overpowering, that if they have never had the opportunity of seeing it before, 
they forget their appointed tasks of observation, and wi// look round during the 
few seconds of total obscuration, to witness the scene. Although it is not im- 
possible, but that some frigid man of metal nerve may be found capable of resist- 
ing the temptation, yet certain it is, that no man of ordinary feelings and human 
heart and soul, can withstand it. In the eclipse of 1842, it was not only the vo- 
latile Frenchman who was carried away in the impulses of the moment, and had 
afterwards to plead his being no more than a man, as an excuse for his unfulfilled 
part in the observations,—but the same was the case with the staid Englishman, 
and the stolid German. Nor was the history of this experience enough to guard 
against similar results on a second occasion; for in 1851, much the same unin- 
tended perversion of observation took place; and on asking a worthy American 
who had come with his instruments from the other side of the world, pointedly 
to observe this eclipse,—what he had succeeded in doing ?—he merely answered, 
with much quiet impressiveness, that if it was to be observed over again, he 
hoped that he would then be able to do something, but that as it was, he had 
