182 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol XII. No. 292. 



served these bands and recorded tlie results 

 by the phonograph. In this I was assisted 

 by Mr. Thompson. 



Mr. Thompson. At Mr. Snyder's request 

 I will say that having gone to observe the 

 eclipse, I undertook in co-operation with 

 him to watch for the shadow bands. I stood 

 about 20 feet away, and about three minutes 

 before the sun disappeared I noticed very 

 faint streaks. I did not communicate this 

 to Mr. Snyder until they became unmistak- 

 able. At that time they were moving, so 

 far as could be determined, at about the 

 rate of a man running, say, 20 or 30 feet 

 per second or perhaps faster than that. 

 The points were curved, and they appeared 

 to be broken into little curves 4 or 5 inches 

 apart. I should think the dark places in- 

 creased in width as totality approached 

 until the darkness seemed to cover the en- 

 tire space, and a few seconds before the to- 

 tality everything had gone into confusion, 

 and there was no definite progress after 

 that. Just after the totality I noticed that 

 the same direction as before was main- 

 tained, but that there was another system 

 of bands moving in the opposite direction. 

 Thus there were two sets of bands moving 

 in opposite directions, for a very short 

 time, of which Mr. Snj^der has the record 

 in the phonograph. Those that moved in 

 the original direction persisted, fading out 

 gradually in about the same time thej"^ took 

 to come on before totality. I think it very 

 likely that the confusion which I noticed 

 just before totality was due to the action of 

 the two systems of bands. 



Brown Ayers. As I have never figured 

 in the scientific world as an astronomer, it 

 may have been presumptuous for me to 

 undertake to do so much as I did in the 

 observation of the eclipse. But I realized 

 that my position at New Orleans was near 

 the center of the totality, and there were 

 parties who came to our place to observe 

 the eclipse, but who located on other 



grounds. The location seemed to be poor, 

 and one or two who thought of coming 

 gave it up. But I thought as we were the 

 only institution of any magnitude on the 

 line of the eclipse it would be absurd if we 

 should allow it to pass without any observa- 

 tion whatever. When we received the little 

 ephemeris sent out by the United States 

 Naval Observatory, we laid our plans as to 

 what we could do with the appliances at 

 hand. The result was that I tried to observe 

 the shadow bands, and to get the contacts as 

 well as possible. That was my program until 

 about ten days before the time of the eclipse; 

 when Chancellor FuUerton of the Univer- 

 sity of Mississippi, wrote and offered to loan 

 me a fine telescope of 15-inch visual and 

 9 -inch photographic aperture, made by 

 Grubb. I received it gladly, and mounting 

 it prepared to take some photographs with 

 as much accuracy as I could. But the main 

 point I had in view was to get the times of 

 contact. There were different points in 

 the city carefully determined and marked 

 by the Coast Survey, so that I was able to 

 get my position accurately, and I could get 

 "Washington time by signals in my observa- 

 tory. I was able to make a very large num- 

 ber of comparisons to obtain the local time. 

 The plan I adopted was a combination 

 of visual and photographic work. We 

 took the pictures as rapidly as we could feed 

 the plates into the telescope, the position 

 being carefully adjusted by star-trails, and 

 we had a snap shutter automatically record- 

 ing the time at which each picture was 

 taken. This gave us a large number of 

 photographs of which the time was ac- 

 curately determined. We were so fortu- 

 nate as to get a plate showing the Bailly 

 beads, and the next plate was blank ; so 

 that we have secured a very accurate ob- 

 servation of the time of the second contact. 

 At the time of the third contact I was 

 peculiarly fortunate ; for just as the plate 

 was exposed by the snap shot, there was a 



