24 NETHER LOCHABER. 



on the present occasion. Although duly at our post from before 

 sunrise till the minute calculated for the last contact of the planet 

 with the solar disc, we were unable to obtain anything more than 

 the most momentary blink even of the larger orb, and, of course, 

 the detection of the black button-like disc of the planet itself, in 

 such circumstances, was altogether out of the question. The dis- 

 appointment, however, was less annoying to us in this instance 

 from the fact that we had already been privileged to witness all the 

 phases of a similar conjunction from first to last on the 12th 

 November 1861. The next visible transit of Mercury does not 

 take place till the 6th of May 1878 ten years hence. There are 

 several other transits during the present century, invisible in our 

 country, however, and on the continent of Europe ; but which will 

 probably afford much delight to many an eager watcher over the 

 length and breadth of the South American continent, and generally 

 over the islands of the Pacific Ocean. 



Nor, with us here at least, was the night of the 13-1 4th instant 

 any way more favourable for observation than the dull beclouded 

 morning of the 5th itself. The night was calm and rainless, to be 

 sure, but a heavy impenetrable mass of dark grey clouds, so low as 

 to envelop all the mountain summits around, obscured the vault 

 from horizon to horizon, from sunset to sunrise, so that not a single 

 meteor could be seen by the keenest eye, even if above that pall of 

 cloud the display had been the most brilliant and splendid con- 

 ceivable. From the fact, however, that in several places widely 

 distant from each other, from which we have had communications 

 on the subject, and where the sky was abundantly clear and 

 unclouded throughout, no unusual display of meteors was seen, the 

 probability is that we have on this occasion missed them in our 

 country, either because they came into contact with our atmosphere 

 in the daytime, when, of course, they would be invisible, or more 

 likely because our contact this year with the meteorolithic annulus 



