GEE AT SOLAR ECLIPSES. 17 



of July 18, 1860, which was visible in Spain, and led 

 to the interesting * Himalaya expedition.' 



The totality lasted nearly twice as long in the 

 eclipse of 1851 as in that of 1842. Sir G. Airy, who 

 had witnessed the earlier eclipse, was one of a dis- 

 tinguished company which left England for Sweden 

 to observe the eclipse of 1851. *I have no means 

 of ascertaining,' he writes, l whether the darkness really 

 was. greater in the eclipse of 1842. I am inclined to 

 think that in the wonderful, and I may say appalling, 

 obscurity, I saw the grey granite hills, within sight of 

 Hvalas, more distinctly than the darker country 

 surrounding the Superga. But whether because, in 

 1851, the sky was much less clouded than in 1842 

 (so that the transition was from a more luminous state 

 of sky to a darkness nearly equal in both cases), or from 

 whatever cause, the suddenness of the darkness in 1851 

 appeared to be much more striking than in 1842. My 

 friends who were on the upper rock, to which the path 

 was very good, had great difficulty in descending. A 

 candle had been lighted in a lantern about a quarter 

 of an hour before the totality ; and M. Hasselgren was 

 unable to read the minutes of the chronometer's face 

 without having the lantern held close to the chrono- 

 meter.' 



During this eclipse the red prominences were seen 

 with remarkable distinctness. Airy at Grottenburg, 

 Hind and Dawes at Ecevelsburg, Lassell at the 

 Trollhatten Falls, and other observers, took drawings 

 of these remarkable appearances ; and the agreement 

 ni. C 



