92 THE INDIAN ECLIPSE, 1898. 



appearance of the white corona upon the darkened sky : and as 

 it would be difficult for a trained artist, and impossible for an 

 amateur, to sketch accurately the whole of a complicated object 

 like the corona in the minute and a half, or thereabouts, which 

 is all the time allowed by nature, Mr. Green subdivided his 

 section into four groups of three draughtsmen each, and allotted 

 one quadrant to each group, settling at the same time the size 

 of the circle representing the eclipsing moon, so that all the 

 drawings would be upon the same scale. White chalk, carefully 

 pointed, allows the artist to draw lines of varying force and 

 thickness with the point, and also to express broad sweeps of 

 radiance rapidly by using the side ; it is therefore admirably 

 adapted for simple rough w T ork of this kind. 



As soon as the whole of the second division of the India 

 Expedition had gathered on the Egypt, the work was divided 

 out at a general meeting, and it was found that four persons 

 accustomed to sketch from nature were willing to constitute 

 such a section as Mr. Green had conceived. These were 

 Mrs. Bevan, Mrs. Oakes, Mr. Nicholson, and Mr. H. Keatley 

 Moore. Mr. Moore was chosen to direct the party, and it was 

 agreed to follow as closely as possible the lines laid down by 

 Mr. Green. Blue paper not being procurable in mid-ocean, 

 brown paper was necessarily substituted at the practices, but 

 the actual drawings were made upon paper of the desired tint. 

 The enthusiasm of the little section enabled practices to be held 

 for about an hour nearly every evening after it was constituted. 

 The observers sat in a large space on the lower deck, beneath 

 the great well-opening of the after hatch. Each evening an 

 imaginary corona was drawn to a large scale, roughly resembling 

 one of the coronas of previous eclipses : the drawing was pinned 

 to a stiff board in which holes were bored along each edge, so 

 that it could be hung up by any of its four edges, and then this 

 copy, adjusted at such a height up the hatchway as corresponded 

 to the height of the sun in the sky on eclipse day, was 

 illuminated by a very powerful electric lamp w r hich Capt. 

 Briscoe kindly allowed the electrical engineer (Mr. Maiden) to 

 arrange nightly for this purpose. ome one kindly stood upon 

 an upper deck at the opening into the hatchway ready to 

 expose the copy at a signal, and to withdraw it after ninety 

 seconds : and another volunteer kindly called the time every 

 five seconds by a watch. It was therefore as nearly as possible 

 practising under actual eclipse conditions. 



Each observer was provided with a plumb-line, so that the 

 imaginary moon and corona were cut vertically; and as the 

 horizontal division was not difficult to guess, the four quadrants 

 w T ere thus divided alike by all. A half-crown served to draw 

 the moon-circle for the draughtsmen (the moon of the copy 

 being usually 3 inches in diameter), and the sketching paper 



