136 . THE INDIAN ECLIPSE, 1898. 



I should not write anything, for I scarcely paid them any 

 attention. The impression of the glorious sight we had just 

 seen was still upon me, and banished, for the time, thought of all 

 else. 



I should perhaps mention that both before and after totality 

 the sky was perfectly clear, and nothing was observable in either 

 the air or the heavens to account for the strange w^avering 

 shadows that flitted so noiselessly yet rapidly over the white 

 surface of the sheet. 



I can think of nothing to which the phenomenon can be 

 better compared than that which Mrs. Maunder herself men- 

 tioned. If the sun's rays reflected from the waves of a calm sea 

 pass through the thick glass of a porthole window, and fall upon 

 the farther wall of a cabin, the faint flickering shadows seen 

 will, in some degree at least, resemble these wonderful and 

 mysterious shadow-bands. 



GrEORGE P. TAYLOR. 



OBSERVATIONS OF THE SHADOW-BANDS AT NAGPUR. 

 (Communicated by E. Walter Maunder, F.R.A.S.) 



FOUR white sheets were spread on the ground at the top of 

 a small hill. 



From two to four minutes before totality the surface of the 

 sheet showed a rippling movement of wavy bands from north- 

 east to south-west, going straight towards the sun ; the bands 

 were very faint and appeared to be from 1 to 2 inches wide ; 

 the intervening spaces were a little wider than the bands 

 perhaps 1J to 2J inches. All the bands and all the spaces 

 appeared to be of a constant width. No estimate was made of 

 the rate of movement, but it was rapid, like a fast-flowing tide : 

 the duration may have been a minute or a little more. It 

 seemed impossible to photograph the bands, there was exceed- 

 ingly little contrast between light and shade. 



AGNES E. HENDERSON, M.D. 



The " Shadow -bands " were not bands exactly, and were not 

 unlike the shadows cast on the ground by waving branches of 

 trees ; they had a rippling kind of movement, and seemed to 

 move up and down as well as across. They reappeared at the 

 close of totality, moving, I think, in the opposite direction. 



JOHN LENDRUM. 



I wished to observe the sweep of the shadow, the wonderful 

 chiaroscuro of the terrestrial landscapes under the illumination 

 of the chromosphere when the light of the photosphere should 



