THE ECLIPSE OF 1871. 1 27 



liable to be affected by physiological peculiarities. 

 From the moment when totality began, the photogra- 

 phic plates were set one after another to record the 

 aspect of the corona, without any fear that the plates 

 exposed earlier or later would be more or less sensitive 

 to the influence of the corona's very delicate light. As 

 yet the results have not been available for examination 

 in Europe ; but we have from all sides the announce- 

 ment that the photographs represent the corona as 

 unchanged in form throughout the totality, with 

 persistent rifts, extending to a great distance from the 

 sun. This is, in effect, decisive. There was room for 

 a shadow of doubt (at least in some minds) when, in 

 December 1870, Mr. Brothers obtained, in the last 

 eleven seconds of totality, a picture showing well- 

 marked rifts in an extensive corona, 1 for there were no 

 sufficient means of proving that the same rifts existed 

 at the beginning of the totality. But now all doubts 

 of that sort are finally disposed of; and since radial 

 beams in our own atmosphere, or produced by the 

 passage of the sun's light past the irregularities of the 

 lunar surface, must inevitably have changed markedly 

 in position during the progress of totality, we have 

 decisive evidence against the two theories which had 



1 Mr. Brothers's picture showed the corona -widest on the west, 

 whereas a picture by Lord Lindsay seemed to show the corona widest 

 on the east ; and great importance was attached to the circumstance. 

 But on a careful examination of the prominences shown in the two 

 pictures, it became clear that one of the pictures had been by some 

 accident inverted. So soon as the pictures were so placed that the 

 promiaences were brought into agreement, the corona w8 found to 

 extend towards the same side in each. 



