56 The Great Solar Ech'j)se [Jan., 



tlie protuberances d, e were shown on the tliird plate. The great 

 horn e is in height about -,'^th of the sun's diameter, and it would 

 therefore in reality be 12,000 miles high. 



Major Tennant, writing from Guntoor, on the day of the 

 eclipse, says : — 



" This morning was very promising, and if it had followed the 

 course of its predecessor we should have had a magnificent clear 

 sky, but it clouded over the east with thin cumulostrati, which, 

 while hardly stopping vision, interfere very much with the photo- 

 graphic energy ; and the result was that every negative was under- 

 exposed, and we have little more than very dense marks showing 

 the protuberances. The six plates arranged for were duly exposed, 

 but the heat so concentrated the nitrate of silver solution that, 

 besides showing but faint traces of any corona, they are all 

 covered with spots. Still, we may make something ,of them, and 

 will try." 



This appears very unsatisfactory; but from a second letter, 

 written five days after, he says that they have since been enlarging 

 the photographs, and he is very well satisfied. 



" The clouds reduced the actinism very much and very un- 

 equally, but that has shown new things to me. 1st. There is very 

 little corona. 2nd. The cloudy structure of prominences is very 

 marked. But the most remarkable thing is a great horn, which 

 seems to have been 3' 20" nearly high. I have, as I told Mr. 

 Airy, clearly seen in its spectrum, c, d, and h, and I believe I saw 

 F, but did not identify it. Now this shows both in Nos. 1 and 3 

 (photographs) as a ribbon of light, coiled spirally round a semi- 

 transparent centre. It is very beautiful, and marked m 3, which 

 was taken two minutes after the (commencement of) totality, and I 

 am doing my best to keep this feature (to retain this feature) in the 

 copies. No. 1 was taken apparently before the last of the sun went. 

 Phillips (one of his assistants) says it was ; and there is a spot of 

 fog such as v\ould be the result. There is a fine line of light seen 

 through all this fog much brighter than the corona. This, too, I 

 am keeping on enlarging. We have got six enlarged positives 

 about 2^ inches in diameter from each negative. Every one of 

 these shows the same remarkable spiral structure in the great horn. 

 I find there are traces in a drawing which Dr. Janssen got made of 

 that prominence (mentioned in the first part of his letters as 

 invisible to the eye) of which I spoke. The positive copies I will 

 enlarge to 9 inches." 



In a subsequent letter Major Tennant says that the great horn 

 was 90,000 English miles or more in height. 



The editor of the ' Photographic News ' has commented in 

 very severe terms on these results. He says : — " Our first impulse, 

 0}i reading such a statement as the result of such an expedition on 



