5/4 The Smithsonian Institution 



tury which traverse the United States. These are nine in 

 number. Seven of them have passed ; the first of the remain- 

 ing two will occur in October, 1865, and the other in August, 

 1869." The foregoing quotation, from the Report for 1854, 

 is interesting as showing, incidentally, how the distribution of 

 the population in the United States has changed since 1854, 

 for besides those named there were two other great eclipses 

 visible within our territory namely, that of July, 1878, from 

 Wyoming to Texas; and that of January, 1889, in northern 

 California and Nevada; but in making his map of 1854 

 Professor Coffin did not think it worth his while to chart 

 these tracks which passed through unknown wildernesses. 

 They were both well observed, however, by parties who 

 traveled by railway from the Atlantic seaboard, bringing 

 complete equipments in photography and spectroscopy. 



The Reports of 1878 and of 1879 refer to a work by Pro- 

 fessor D. P. Todd, undertaken under the auspices of the In- 

 stitution, relating to the interpretation of the observations of 

 ancient eclipses of the sun, with special reference to the de- 

 termination of the moon's secular acceleration. This work 

 has not yet been published. 



A series of photographic prints of the corona as seen at 

 the total solar eclipse of January, 1889, was issued by the 

 Institution under the editorship of Professor D. P. Todd, as a 

 separate quarto, but was not included in the regular series of 

 " Contributions to Knowledge." It consisted of nine pages 

 of text, with two photographic plates, showing nine different 

 views of the solar corona during the total eclipse. 



This comprises all of the active work pertaining to solar 

 eclipses that has been accomplished by the Smithsonian Insti- 

 tution, although the United States National Museum has 

 profited greatly by collections that have been gathered by 

 the different parties sent out. 



