34 LIGHT SCIENCE FOR LEISURE HOURS. 



acknowledgment of the source whence the suggestion 

 had come. But assuredly I hoped that some steps 

 would have been taken without delay to seize an 

 opportunity so important, the loss of which could not 

 but reflect some degree of discredit upon the science 

 of this country. 



For up to that very time the spring of 1869 the 

 importance of an Antarctic expedition for observing 

 the transit of 1882 by Halley's method had been in- 

 sisted upon over and over again by leading astrono- 

 mical and geographical authorities. Nay, this very 

 station, Possession Island, had been selected as the 

 most suitable. The feasibility of reaching it and land- 

 ing on it had been insisted upon. The superior 

 meteorological chances presented by the station, as 

 compared with other southern stations, had been dwelt 

 on strongly. Everything promised that before long an 

 Antarctic reconnoitring expedition would set forth to 

 prepare the way. It was in the full height of these 

 anticipatory inquiries that I pointed out the inex- 

 pediency of any attempts to apply Halley's method at 

 an Antarctic station in 1882, dwelling earnestly on the 

 fact that when the transit began at Possession Island, 

 in 1882, the sun would be barely five degrees above 

 the horizon, an elevation utterly unfit for exact obser- 

 vations. Upon this all the plans for an Antarctic 

 expedition in 1882 were abandoned. But although 

 this was as it should be (for the lives of our seamen 

 are not to be endangered without the prospect of 

 valuable results), there was no necessity for abandon- 



