ASTRONOMICAL AND METEOROLOGICAL PHENOMENA. 263 



direction, at about an angle of 60° from a radius towards the east, 

 and was a minute and a half (42,000 miles) long. As the moon 

 glided onwards in her course, she approached it gradually, and at 

 last touched the extreme point of this floating cloud, which glowed 

 with all the brilliancy of one of our own terrestrial clouds at sunset. 

 It presented a decided rose tint. 



" At 72° from the north a protuberance, in shape reminding one of 

 a boomerang, imprinted itself on a collodionized plate, although it 

 was not visible to me in the telescope. The stem was 2 minutes 

 long (56,000 miles) ; the point was bent towards the north, inclining 

 downwards over towards the extremity of the detached cloud. It is 

 a very curious circumstance that this protuberance imprinted itself 

 distinctly, although it did not attract the eye directed especially to 

 that locality. This may be accounted for on the supposition that it 

 emitted a feeble purple light. 



" My own observation, and those of others, furnish an additional 

 proof that the luminous prominences retained a fixed position in 

 regard to the sun, and that as successive portions of the moon passed 

 before them, they did not change either their former appearance, 

 except in so far that the moon, by passing over them, shut off one 

 portion after another towards the east, while more was visible of 

 those protuberances on the west ; and great protuberances came into 

 view and were depicted in the second photograph. A more important 

 inference, leading to the same physical conclusion, is, that the moon's 

 disc distinctly slid between the upper and the lower prominences, by 

 a quantity measurable on the photographs. This is confirmed by the 

 Astronomer Royal's measures of angular position of the prominences. 



"Just before and after the eclipse sun-pictures were made; and 

 during the progress of the eclipse 31 photographs were obtained, the 

 times of which are carefully registered. These will serve hereafter to 

 determine the path of the moon across the sun's disc and other data 

 with considerable accuracy. The serrated edge of the moon is per- 

 fectly depicted in all the photographs, and in some of them one cusp 

 of the sun may be seen blunted by the projections of a lunar moun- 

 tain, while the other remains perfectly sharp. The indentations of 

 the concave side of the luminous prominences, as seen in the photo- 

 graphs at the period of totality, are far greater than the well-marked 

 profiles of the lunar mountains, shown in the photographs of the 

 other places of the eclipse". The surface of the sun just bordering 

 the moon's dark disc is brighter for a short distance than the other 

 portions ; a phenomenon deserving of attention. 



" With the Kew photoheliograph, the moon does not give the 

 slightest trace of a picture with an exposure of one minute ; the 

 pictures of the luminous prominences, which were procured in the 

 same time, are over-exposed, and the corona has clearly depicted itself 

 on both the plates ; the light of the corona is therefore more brilliant 

 than that of the moon. "When the second plate was placed in the tele- 

 scope, the wind rose, and shook the observatory and telescope vio- 

 lently, and some of the brighter prominences have depicted themselves 

 three times on the second plate ; thus showing how short a time was 



