176 The Late Transit of Venus. (\April, 
In any case it appears that accelerated ingress is fairly 
provided for; though at the best English stations for that 
phase Janssen’s method failed, and the ingress was not very 
satisfactorily seen. 
In the opposite region around 1’ there were three English 
observing parties, two in Kerguelen Island, and one on 
Rodriguez; while Lord Lindsay’s station at the Mauritius, 
though not specially intended for Delislean operations, was 
even better placed than the Rodriguez station. I shall 
speak more at length of Lord Lindsay’s aperations further 
on. Here it is only necessary to say that his party missed 
ingress, though otherwise successful. At Rodriguez ingress 
was successfully observed, but as yet no details have 
reached England. It is known that the various parties 
stationed on Kerguelen Island were successful; but the 
nature of their success is not known, all the news yet 
received from that dismal island having been derived from 
the interchange of signals between the parties stationed 
there, and a passing ship. 
It would appear that a fair success has attended the 
employment of Delisle’s method, as applied to ingress. At 
least, whatever defects may appear hereafter in the results 
by this method will be due to the inherent defects of the 
method itself, requiring as it does the observation of contact 
when the sun is not far from the horizon. Janssen’s con- 
trivance, by which it was hoped that this difficulty would be 
removed, failed entirely for ingress. 
Turning next to egress, we have first to consider the 
operations around the point E’, where accelerated egress was 
to be observed. The stations provided by England for 
observing this phase were in New Zealand, though the 
Government Observatory at Melbourne, and the Observatory 
at Sydney were fairly placed. It must be remembered, how- 
ever, that everything depends on securing observations at 
both ends of either Delislean base-line by similar methods 
and by observers similarly trained. The only stations thus 
provided for were those in New Zealand ; and unfortunately 
bad weather prevented the observation of egress at any of 
these stations. The American party, stationed at Queens- 
town, in Otago, were able to observe and photograph all the 
transit except egress, but the English parties were not even 
favoured with this partial success—or rather, I should say, 
with a degree of success which, in their case, would have 
been but partial; for to the Americans the observation of 
egress was a matter of small importance. It is impossible 
not to sympathise with Major Palmer, on account of this 
