174 The Late Transit of Venus. [April, 
photographic station there; next they would make the station 
also a Delislean one; and, lastly, they conceded all that had 
been asked, a thing hitherto unheard of in the annals of 
officialism. 
While, however, no inconsiderable proportion even of the 
English preparations were directed to Halleyan operations 
(more or less disguised), it was to England, almost alone, 
that Delislean operations were left. The Americans declined 
totidem verbis to occupy any station where the whole transit 
could not be seen; the French refused to occupy the 
Mauritius or Suez (calling forth from English official 
astronomy an expression of strong dissatisfaction), and the 
Germans, though they occupied a station in Persia where 
the ingress could not be seen, yet specially provided for 
photographic work there during the middle of the transit. 
The Russians alone, having provided eleven Halleyan 
stations in Siberia, consented also to have observers at 
Delislean stations nearer to Russia in Europe, extending 
around k’ to the Black Sea, Caspian Sea, and Sea of Aral. 
The only Delislean stations properly so termed near 
I were those occupied by the three English parties under 
Captain Tupman, in the Sandwich Isles, at Honolulu, Atooi, 
or Kanaii, and Owhyhee (or Hawaii). At the two first obser- 
vations were successfully made, but at Hawaii, the least 
important fortunately of the three, the observers Forbes and 
Barnacle had bad weather. Detailed information has not 
yet reached us respecting the observations made by Tupman 
and his party at Honolulu, but it is known that the Janssen 
apparatus failed. The reader is doubtless aware that this 
apparatus was so arranged as to allow sixty photographs to 
be taken at intervals of a second—a large circular plate 
being so turned that picture after picture would be taken 
around the border of the plate; so that if the turning began 
half a minute or so before the true moment of internal 
contact, one or other of the pictures would depict Venus in 
true internal contact. Whether the manager of this organ- 
grinding arrangement (to adopt a humorous simile of the 
Astronomer Royal’s) began turning too soon or too late is 
not known, for the telegraphic announcement from Honolulu 
states simply ‘‘ Janssen failed.” Sixty photographs were 
obtained there, presumably by this method, and these either 
represent Venus drawing nearer and nearer to the position 
of internal contact, or else they were all taken after she had 
broken away from the sun’s edge. Unfortunately the tele- 
gram indicates only too clearly the probable cause of failure, 
in these words, “‘ internal contact uncertain several seconds.” 
