NEW PLANETS NEAR THE SUN. 49 



The accompanying figure will serve to give a fair idea of 

 the position of the stranger. 



North 

 Sun 



I 



Stranger 

 South 



Fig. i. Watson's new Planet. 



Now comes the evidence which was at first supposed to 

 be strongly corroborative of Watson's observation, the re- 

 cognition of a star of about the fourth magnitude, near Theta 

 Cancri, by Professor Louis Swift, who observed the eclipse 

 from Pike's Peak, in Colorado. 



Professor Swift also made some rather unusual arrange- 

 ments with his telescope, but they were not altogether so well 

 adapted to advance his purpose as were Professor Watson's. 

 To prevent the instrument from swaying he tied what he calls 

 a pole (but what in England 1 imagine would be called a 

 stick), ten feet long, about a foot from the eye-end of the 

 telescope, leaving the other end of this singular appendage 

 to trail on the ground. (The telescope was set low, Pro- 

 fessor Swift judging, it would seem, that the most comfort- 

 able way to observe was to lie on his back.) As a natural 

 consequence, while he could move his telescope very readily 

 one way, trailing the stick along, he could not move it the other 

 way, because the stick's end immediately stuck into the ground. 

 As the stick was on the west of the telescope, Professor Swift 

 could move the eye-end eastwards, following the sun's west- 

 wardly motion. Of course the telescope was to have been 

 released from the stick when totality began, but unfor- 

 tunately Professor Swift omitted to do this, so that he had 

 to work during totality with a hampered telescope. 



The following is his account of what he saw : 



* My hampered telescope behaved badly, and no regula- 

 rity in the sweeps could be maintained. Almost at once my 



E 



