BOOK OF THE DAMNED 219 



but are only correlates to a dominant we advertised^ predicted 

 eclipse that did not occur at all. Now, without any especial feel- 

 ing, except that of recognition of the fate of all attempted absolu- 

 tism, we give the instance, noting that, though such an evil thing 

 to orthodoxy, it was orthodoxy that recorded the non-event. 



Monthly Notices of the R. A. 5., 8-132: 



"Remarkable appearances during the total eclipse of the moon 

 on March 19, 1848": 



In an extract from a letter from Mr. Forster, of Bruges, it is 

 said that, according to the writer's observations at the time of the 

 predicted total eclipse, the moon shone with about three times the 

 intensity of the mean illumination of an eclipsed lunar disk: that 

 the British Consul, at Ghent, who did not know of the predicted 

 eclipse, had written enquiring as to the "blood-red" color of the 

 moon. 



This is not very satisfactory to what used to be our malices. But 

 there follows another letter, from another astronomer, Walkey, who 

 had made observations at Clyst St. Lawrence: that, instead of an 

 eclipse, the moon became as is printed in italics "most beauti- 

 fully illuminated" . . . "rather tinged with a deep red" . . . "the 

 moon being as perfect with light as if there had been no eclipse 

 whatever." 



I note that Chambers, in his work upon eclipses, gives Forster's 

 letter in full and not a mention of Walkey's letter. 



There is no attempt in Monthly Notices to explain upon the 

 notion of greater distance of the moon, and the earth's shadow fall- 

 ing short, which would make as much trouble for astronomers, if 

 that were not foreseen, as no eclipse at all. Also there is no refuge 

 in saying that virtually never, even in total eclipses, is the moon 

 totally dark "as perfect with light as if there had been no eclipse 

 whatever." It is said that at the time there had been an aurora 

 borealis, which might have caused the luminosity, without a datum 

 that such an effect, by an aurora, had ever been observed upon the 

 moon. 



But single instances so an observation by Scott, in the Antarctic. 

 The force of this datum lies in my own acceptance, based upon 

 especially looking up this point, that an eclipse nine-tenths of to- 

 tality has great effect, even though the sky be clouded. 



Scott (Voyage of the Discovery, vol. n, p. 215): 



"There may have been an eclipse of the sun, Sept. 21, 1903, as 



