120 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 
ness to take charge of my notebook. I mentioned, and he 
wrote rapidly down, such things as seemed worthy of 
remembrance. Thus my hands and mind were entirely 
free; but it was all to no purpose. A patch of sunlight fell 
and rested upon the landscape some miles awav. It was 
the only illuminated spot within view. But to the north- 
west there was still a space of blue which might reach us in 
time. Within seven minutes of totality another space 
toward the zenith became very dark. The atmosphere was, 
as it were, on the brink of a precipice, being charged with 
humidity, which required but a slight chill to bring it 
down in clouds. This was furnished by the withdrawal of 
the solar beams: the clouds did come down, covering up 
the space of blue on which our hopes had so long rested. I 
abandoned the telescope and walked to and fro in despair. 
As the moment of totality approached, the descent toward 
darkness was as obvious as a falling stone. I looked toward 
a distant ridge, where the darkness would first appear. At 
the moment a fan of beams, issuing from the hidden sun, 
was spread out over the southern heavens. Those beams are 
bars of alternate light and shade, produced in illuminated 
haze by the shadows of floating cloudlets of varying density. 
The beams are practically parallel, but by an effect of per- 
spective they appear divergent, having the sun, in fact, for 
their point of convergence. The darkness took possession 
of the ridge referred to, lowered upon M. Janssen's observ- 
atory, passed over the southern heavens, blotting out the 
beams as if a sponge had been drawn across them. It then 
took successive possession of three spaces of blue sky in the 
southeastern atmosphere. I again looked toward the ridge. 
A glimmer as of day-dawn was behind it, and immediately 
afterward the fan of beams, which had been for more than 
two minutes absent, revived. The eclipse of 1870 had 
ended, and, as far as the corona and flames were concerned, 
we had been defeated. 
Even in the heart of the eclipse the darkness was by no 
means perfect. Small print could be read. In fact, the 
clouds which rendered the day a dark one, by scattering 
light into the shadow, rendered the darkness less intense 
than it would have been had the atmosphere been without 
cloud. In the more open spaces I sought for stars, but 
could find none. There was a lull in the wind before and 
after totality, but during the totality the wind was strong, 
