Dec. lo, 1 8 74 J 



NATURE 



103 



various parties. The English flag floats over the obser- 

 vatories of three parties in the Sandwich Islands, two 

 parties in Kerguelen's Land, one in Rodriguez, one in 

 New Zealand, two in Egypt, and one in India ; nor must 

 we omit to mention Lord Lindsay's station in the 

 Mauritius, though his is a private expedition. This is a 

 goodly list, but it is surpassed in its area of distribution 

 by the American expeditions, which occupy Vladivostok 

 in Siberia, Tien-tsin, a station in Japan, and in the 

 Southern seas Kerguelen's Land, the Crozets, Hobart 

 Town, Bluff Harbour (New Zealand), and Chatham 

 Island. France has seven stations — Campbell and St. 

 Paul's Islands, Noumea, Pekin, Yokohama, and Saigon. 

 Russia does not occupy any southern stations, but she 

 makes up for this by observing at no less than thirty 

 stations within her own territory. The German Govern- 

 ment has equipped five southern parties, while Holland is 

 represented at Rdunion. Italy has a party in Egypt. 

 She was to have been represented by four parties in all ; 

 but little is known of her arrangements. 



The number of observed Transits has been so few that 

 it is an easy task to contrast the present an-angements 

 with what was done in former times. Horrox, one of the 

 most gifted of English men of science — whose memory, 

 we rejoice to know, will this year be appropriately, if 

 tardily, perpetuated by a tablet in Westminster Abbey — 

 predicted the Transit of 1639 so shortly before he 

 observed it that there was no time, if, indeed, there had 

 been any desire, to send observers from England. When 

 the next Transits occurred in the following century, in the 

 years 1761 and 1769, the expeditions were few. In the 

 former year we had an English expedition to Sumatra and 

 a French one to Pondicherry, neither of which reached its 

 destination ; and there was another French expedition to 

 Tobolsk. Observations were made at many places, the 

 unfortunate Le Gentil, the French Envoy to Pondicherry, 

 making his on board ship. In 1769 came the celebrated 

 voyage of Captain (then Lieutenant) Cook, in the 

 Endeavour, to Otaheite, on behalf of England. The 

 King of Denmark sent an observer to Lapland ; and the 

 French Academy despatched one to California, in addition 

 to Le Gentil. The latter had waited at Pondicherry since 

 1761, hoping to make up by good fortune in 1769 for his 

 partial want of success in 1761, but the Fates were 

 against him. 



It will be seen from this rapid statement that, so far as 

 the number of the personnel is concerned, the present 

 expeditions are beyond all precedent. This remark 

 naturally applies much more strongly to the means of 

 observation. Not only do modern telescopes bear the 

 same relation to those used on former occasions as a 

 Woolwich gun does to a smooth-bore musket, but two 

 new instruments of inquiry have been added to the scien- 

 tific stock-in-trade. This morning, if the weather has 

 been favourable, more than a score of cameras have 

 obtained permanent records of the black spot travelling 

 over the sun's disc at one part or another, or during the 

 whole time of its passage, and if the spectroscope has 

 not been used to record the planet's contact with the sun 

 long before the eye or photographic plate could detect 

 her presence, and again to mark the exact instant at 

 which she parted company with it, it is not the fault of 

 the instrument. But it is not merely to the perscnnc/ nor 



to the instruments employed that we wish to draw chief 



attention, but rather to the indications afforded that the 

 example which England and France have of old set in 

 promoting such inquiries is being followed by other 

 nations, and_with a most remarkable vigour and intensity 

 of purpose. Denmark, which took no part in this morn- 

 ing's observations, has been replaced by the United 

 States, Germany, Holland, and Italy, and the part played 

 by these nations, new to this peaceful strife, is most im- 

 portant. The United States lead all the other nations, 

 in respect both of the amount of money which her 

 Government has contributed,' and of the discomfort, not 

 to say dangers, of the stations she has chosen in the 

 Southern seas. Posts of importance which were given up 

 as too hopelessly miserable even for enthusiastic English 

 astronomers will be occupied by Americans. The Ger- 

 mans 'have closely followed England and the United 

 States in this noble competition, and although the sum 

 contributed by the German Government is small com- 

 pared with the American subsidy, the German observa- 

 tions made this morning in the South seas will be among 

 the most important obtained by all the expeditions. 

 With regard 'to Italy, also, there are the same signs of 

 scientific enterprise. The spectroscope, which forms no 

 part of the equipment of the English expeditions, was 

 intended by her men of science to be their chief weapon 

 of attack, and as in no country is there such a skilled 

 body of spectroscopists as in Italy, this determination 

 was probably not arrived at on insufficient grounds. 



What, then, is the meaning of all this .^ It is that as 

 the world grows older each nation as it develops, as the 

 Ignited States, Germany, and Italy have of late largely 

 developed, under modern conditions, feels the necessity 

 for taking a continual and a largely increasing share in the 

 promotion of science even in its most abstract forms. It 

 should be a subject of pride for us to know that in this 

 they are but following the example set by England in 

 former centuries, including the days "when George III. 

 was King." If we consider the revolutions effected by 

 science since Capt. Cook's famous expedition to observe 

 the last Transit, we shall not be astonished that the 

 nations are beginning to vie with each other so eagerly in 

 its development. When Cook sailed in 1768, Watt was 

 thirty-two years of age ; in the very year of the Transit he 

 introduced the closed cylinder, and so gave us the steam- 

 engine of to-day in its essential point. In the same year 

 the founders of chemistry were in their early prime. 

 Priestley was thirty-six years of age. Cavendish thirty- 

 eight. Black forty-one, and Lavoisier twenty-six ; Dalton 

 was three years old. What has not chemistry done for 

 England since their time ? Be it always remembered that 

 all the work of these men was of the most abstract kind, 

 and yet that out of it has grown insensibly a large part of 

 England's commercial greatness. Nor is this all. There 

 is another development of science still which must be 

 mentioned, but which is of so recent a date that in 1769 

 no one whose name is now associated with one of the 

 greatest triumphs of science was born. We refer to those 

 discoveries that have belted our world with the electric 

 wires which to-day, from the most distant parts of our 

 planet's surface, will bring to Europe the results of this 

 morning's work. 



It IS a proper subject of national pride that the benefits 



