May 13, 1898.] 



SCIENCE. 



671 



fort should be made to occupy as many stations 

 as practicable along the track of the last eclipse, 

 which, starting from Equatorial Africa, crossed 

 India and ended in the Chinese Empire. It 

 was not, however, found possible to send an 

 •observing party to Africa ; so the field was nar- 

 rowed to the shadow track through central 

 India. There the choice of stations was practi- 

 cally confined to the neighborhood of the places 

 where the various railway lines intersected the 

 central line of the shadow, and of these the 

 more westerly had the advantage of giving 

 slightly longer duration of totality. The Joint 

 Eclipse Committee arranged for four parties of 

 observers. Sir Norman Lockyer, whose main 

 equipment consisted of prismatic cameras, was 

 at Viziadrug ; Professor Turner and the lecturer, 

 who originally intended to station themselves 

 at Karad, near Poona, wer« obliged, on ac- 

 count of the outbreak of the plague, to go instead 

 to Sahdol, a place farther east with a shorter 

 ■duration of totality ; Captain Hills and Mr. 

 Newall were at Palgaon with slit spectroscopes, 

 and Dr. Copeland took large-scale photographs 

 of the corona with a lens of 40ft. focus. In ad- 

 dition there was a party, under the auspices of 

 the British Astronomical Association, at Talni, 

 consisting of Mr. and Mrs. Maunder, Mr. 

 Thwaites and Mr. Evershed ; the Viceroy of 

 India was in the neighborhood of Buxar, near 

 Benares, with a large party which included Mr. 

 Pope, of the Indian Survey, and there were 

 three other parties of observers near Jeur, to the 

 southeast of Poona. The track of the shadow 

 was thus very well occupied thi-oughout India. 

 Admirable arrangements were made by the 

 Government for the observers, who were also 

 indebted to the Indian railway companies for 

 their liberal treatment. Mr. Christie then 

 passed on to consider some of the results ob- 

 tained. Beginning with photographs of the 

 corona, he said that a special feature was the 

 number and variety of instruments utilized to 

 take these on the large scale of about 4in. to 

 the sun's diameter. Professor Campbell, Dr. 

 Copeland and Mr. Michie Smith had each a tele- 

 scope 40ft. long, the form of mounting being dif- 

 ferent in each case. The instrument he himself 

 used was on a different principle, the large 

 scale being obtained by applying a concave lens 



to magnify the image formed by an object glass 

 of comparatively short focal length. Thus the 

 total length of the telescope was kept within 

 njanageable dimensions — lift, in his case in- 

 stead of 40ft. as in the ordinary form. An- 

 other important feature in the instrumental 

 equipment was the coelostat — a form of mount- 

 ing a mirror devised by Mr. G. Lippmann in 

 1893, and successfully used in the recent eclipse 

 at three stations — Sahdol, Palgaon and Vizia- 

 drug. Another interesting new departure was 

 Professor Burckhalter's device for giving to 

 each part of the corona the exact exposure best 

 suited to its brightness. He arranged to get the 

 whole on one plate by using a slit of peculiar 

 form in a metal screen which rotated rapidly in 

 front of the photographic plate. Numerous 

 spectroscopic observations were carried out both 

 with slit spectroscopes and prismatic cameras, 

 and Mr. Newall attempted to determine the 

 relative motion in the line of sight by the dis- 

 placement of the corona lines in the spectrum. 

 Professor Turner made polariscopic observations 

 to discover how much of the light of the corona 

 was polarized, and Mr. Newall noticed strong 

 polarization of the atmosphere at all points 

 within 30 minutes of the sun. At Sahdol tem- 

 perature observations were made, and a fall of 

 8 degrees was registered 20 minutes after total- 

 ity. At Buxar a kinematograph was employed, 

 but the film had since disappeared. In conclu- 

 sion, Mr. Christie, remarking that the form of 

 the corona was not quite what was expected, 

 said that in this connection it was a suggestive 

 fact that at the time of the eclipse there were 

 more spots than usual on the sun at that epoch 

 of the cycle, and that from January 15th to 

 January 21st great magnetic disturbances were 

 registered at Greenwich. The lecture was 

 illustrated with many lantern slides, and a 

 number of photographs were displayed in the 

 library. 



THE BENEKE PEIZES. 



The Philosophical Faculty of the Georg- 

 Augustus University of Gottingen has just pub- 

 lished, according to Nature, the following infor- 

 mation concerning the Beneke prizes for the 

 years 1897 and 1901 : On March 11, 1898, the 

 birthday of Carl Gustav Beneke the founder of 



