YET A YEAR LATER. 91 



or ten minutes acknowledged by those who had once 

 sought to reason away the corona almost wholly. It is 

 clear that if any definite coronal feature extending 

 more than ten minutes from the place of the eclipsed 

 sun could be seen at stations far apart, then beyond 

 all question that feature would be shown to be extra 

 terrestrial. For instance, it could not possibly be 

 imagined that some peculiarity in the air over Syracuse 

 could reproduce a feature of this sort precisely as it 

 appeared to the observers near Xerez, owing to a 

 peculiarity of the air over this station. 



Now, soon after the eclipse occurred, it was 

 announced that the observers in Spain had recognised 

 a peculiar gap, shaped like a letter V, in the lower 

 portion of the corona on the left hand. This gap 

 was pictured and described to me by my friend, Mr. 

 W. H. H. Hudson, M.A., and Fellow of St. John's 

 College, Cambridge, before any of the other accounts 

 had come under my notice ; and it was with some 

 interest that I awaited the January meeting of the 

 Royal Astronomical Society, before which the records 

 of the observers in Spain were to be presented. At 

 that meeting a picture was exhibited by Lieutenant 

 Brown, in which this V-shaped gap was a very prominent 

 feature. But in the discussion which ensued after 

 Lieutenant Brown's paper had been read, Mr. Hudson 

 remarked that the gap had seemed somewhat larger 

 to him, on which Lieutenant Brown admitted that 

 perhaps the size of the gap had not been quite ade- 

 quately presented in his drawing. 



