THE SOLAR ECLIPSE OF 1871. 93 



far as the remains of terrestrial animals are concerned. It 

 explains the nearly total absence of land shells, and of the 

 remains of other animals that must have lived in the forests 

 producing the coal, and which would have heen buried 

 there with the coal had it been formed on land as usually 

 supposed. It also meets the cases of the rare and curious 

 exceptions, seeing that occasionally a land animal would 

 here and there be drowned in such fjords under cirum- 

 stances favorable to its fossilization. 



THE SOLAR ECLIPSE OF 1871. 

 THE FIEST TELEGRAMS. 



THIS time we may fairly expect some approach to a 

 solution of the riddle of the corona, as the one essential 

 which neither scientific skill nor Government liberality 

 could secure to the eclipse observers, has been afforded, viz., 

 fine weather. The telegraph has already informed us of 

 this, and also that good use has been made of the good 

 weather. From one station we are told: "Thin mist; 

 spectroscope satisfactory ; reversion of lines entirely con- 

 firmed ; six good photographs." From another : " Weather 

 fine ; telescopic and camera photographs successful ; ditto 

 polarization ; good sketches; many bright lines in spec- 

 trum." 



This is very different from the gloomy accounts of the 

 expedition of last year ; when we consider that the different 

 observers are far apart, and that if all or some of them are 

 similarly favored we shall have in the photographs a series 

 of successive pictures taken at intervals of time sufficiently 

 distant to reveal any progressive changes that may have oc- 

 curred in the corona while the moon's shadow was passing 

 from one station to the other. I anticipate some curious 

 revelations from these progressive photographs, that may 

 possibly reconcile the wide differences in the descriptions 

 that competent observers have given of the corona of former 



