98 SCIENCE IN SHORT CHAPTERS. 



he is surrounded with such marvellous phenomena as a total 

 eclipse presents. 



The grandeur of the gloomy landscape, the sudden 

 starting out of the greater stars, the seeming falling of 

 the vault of heaven, the silence of the animal world, the 

 closing of the flowers, and all that the ordinary observer 

 would^ regard with so much awe and wondering delight, 

 must be sacrificed by the philosopher, whose business is 

 to confine his gaze to a narrow slit between two strips of 

 .metal, and to watch nothing else but the exact position 

 and appearance of a few bright or dark lines across what 

 appears but a strip of colored riband. He must resist the 

 temptation to look aside and around with the stubbornness 

 of self-denial of. another St. Antonio. Besides this, he 

 must thoroughly understand exactly what to look for, and 

 how to find it. By combining the results of his observa- 

 tions with those of the others, who in like manner have 

 undertaken to work with another instrument, or upon 

 another part of the phenomena, we get a scientific result 

 comparable to that which in a manufactory we obtain by 

 the division of labor of many skilled workmen, each doing 

 only that which by his training he has learned to do the 

 best and the most expeditiously. 



FURTHER DETAILS BY POST. 



Although the formal official reports of the Eclipse Ex- 

 pedition are not yet published, and may not be for some 

 weeks or months, we are able from the letters of Lockyer, 

 Jannsen, Respighi, Maclear, etc., to form some idea of the 

 general results. We may already regard two or three im- 

 portant questions as fairly answered. The reversal of the 

 dark solar lines of the spectrum which was first announced 

 by the great Eoman observer, Father Secchi, and seen by 

 him without an eclipse, may now be considered as estab- 

 lished. It is true that all the observers of 1871 did not 

 witness this. Some were doubtful, but others observed 

 it positively and distinctly. 



In such a case negative results do not refute the positive 

 observations of qualified men, especially when several of 



