80 THE INDIAN ECLIPSE, 1898. 



photographs, or the bearing of these results on solar theory. 

 It is desirable, however, in view of the approaching Spanish 

 eclipse, to give an outline of what I consider to be the most 

 important subjects for future investigation, and the most 

 hopeful methods of improving upon the work done at the recent 

 eclipse, and I have accordingly done so in a separate article on 

 page 154. 



MR. E. WALTER MAUNDER'S EEPORT. 



MY instrument was a binocular of about two inches aperture, 

 in one of the eyepieces of which a small direct-vision prism 

 had been mounted. The instrument was so arranged that both 

 halves of it could be used at one time, and so the actual image 

 of the corona could be compared with the ring of light given 

 by any particular bright line in its spectrum. My purpose was 

 to compare the so-called " 1474K" ring with the corona "so as 

 to ascertain the distribution in it of the element " coronium." 

 Each tube of the binocular was furnished with a pair of neutral 

 dark glasses. 



I did not commence any regular observations with the 

 binocular until the partial phase was far advanced, though I 

 looked at the spectrum from time to time. 



By 19 h 15 m , Greenwich Mean Time, a vague suggestion of 

 curvature had come into the spectrum a convexity towards 

 the red. The spectrum was arranged to lie along the line of 

 the moon's motion, the red lying in the direction towards which 

 the moon was moving. About 19 h 30 m the D lines were 

 distinctly seen as a faint, diffused, crescent-shaped shading, and 

 a second similar one was seen in the green, probably the b lines. 

 These gradually became more distinct, and by 19 h 45 m C and F 

 were also seen. From this time the Fraiinhofer lines began 

 quickly to multiply and to become more and more distinct, 

 until at length, some ten minutes before totality, the spectrum 

 was crowded with semicircular arcs, which grew finer and 

 sharper as the arc of sunlight narrowed. The definition of the 

 arcs was very fine, the focus being perfect. 



Then the tips of the arcs turned to light as the continuous 

 spectrum began to narrow. C, D 3 , F, and 6r, were particularly 

 noticed. 



The changes now came very fast, the spectrum narrowed, and 

 more bright arcs of light appeared. The spectrum did not 

 however narrow uniformly, so as to make the central part 

 disappear last. Just before it was finally lost, it broke up into 

 a number of very fine threads of continuous spectrum. At 

 about the same instant the spectrum was full of an infinite 

 number of bright points, beside the arcs already seen. The 



