170 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE 



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. 1 abandoned the telescope and walked 

 to and fro in despair. As the moment of totality ap- 

 proached, 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. These 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 posses- 

 sion of the ridge referred to, lowered upon M. Janssen's 

 observatory, 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 to- 

 ward 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 scatter- 

 ing light into the shadow, rendered the darkness less in- 

 tense than it would have been had the atmosphere been 



