M.-P.— Vol. I.] DAVIDSON—APFARENT PROJECTION, ETC. 87 



them. And one of our best astronomers, in reviewing the 

 physical and other conditions of the 1761, 1769 and 1874 

 transits, summed up his deductions by saying that " the 

 black drop, and the atmospheres of Venus and the Earth, 

 had again produced a series of complicated phenomena 

 extending over many seconds of time." 



Curious Descriptions of the Phenomena. 



With much more speculation of similar import we should 

 be prepared for the crude descriptions and attempted ex- 

 planations given by the observers. They range from 

 a 'Chinaman's hat' to a 'pear-shaped planet,' and are even 

 stretched out to a 'gourd shape.' The descriptions and ex- 

 planations by the same observer are sometimes curiously 

 contradictory or vague, as: 'the limbs were boiling vio- 

 lently,' 'yet quite sharp and doubt only three or four 

 seconds;' there was 'black drop' but 'no distortion;' 'no 

 distortion' yet the 'limbs of the Sun and Moon were spin- 

 ning;' ' interference lines;' ' Venus serrated; ' 'the Sun's 

 limb had lost its sharpness from the overlapping of Venus' 

 atmosphere;' the ' shadow of contact;' from the overlap- 

 ping of the two 'penumbras of imperfect definition;' and 

 most remarkable and incomprehensible, * the sympathetic 

 attraction or assimilation ' of the limbs of the Sun and the 

 planet at the second contact but no 'mutual attraction' at the 

 third. 



In Egypt, in 1882, one observer paid particular attention 

 to detect the black drop and could not see it; another ob- 

 server at the same locality observed the black drop. The 

 imagination would seem to have played a part in the obser- 

 vations. One observer saw Venus twenty-four minutes 

 before contact; and near the first contact he saw "a dis- 

 tinct cone of shadow thrown away into space;" and his 

 drawing is stronger and stranger than his description. In 

 1874 ^^^ chief astronomer of one of the foreign expeditions 

 declared to us that the phenomenon was simply and solely a 

 case of diffraction. 



