2 a a ig 
Scientific Intelligence. 243 
jecting beyond the object glass, and thus enabling the observer to 
examine the sky within a degree or two of the sun without letting 
the sunlight fall upon the lens. If the experiment could be tried 
at a considerable altitude, where the atmospheric glare is at a 
As regards the physics of the sun and the corona, the principal 
At the present time the sun’s spots are at their minimum; whole 
months have passed without the appearance of a single one. The 
corona also would show a corresponding difference of condition 
from that indicated in 1869 and the later eclipses, when the Sun’s 
surface was in full activity, and the question has received an em- 
phatic and affirmative answer. 
As to the brightness of the corona at the recent eclipse, there is 
considerable difference of opinion. The writer, and he thinks a 
large majority of those who also saw the eclipse of 1869, is strong] 
of the impression that in 1869 the corona, though perhaps less 
extensive, was many times more brilliant, while the corona in 
1870 seemed to him intermediate between those of 1869 and 1878. 
Some of the best observers i 
, however, are of quite the contrary 
made under almost precisely similar cireumstances—near the mid- 
dle fi the eclipse, and after about a minute of close spectroscopic 
wo 
While, however, there may be room to question the conclusion 
that the corona this year was uncommonly faint, there can be no 
question that its spectrum was profoundly modified. 
The bright lines which come from its gaseous constituents were 
Conspicuous in 1869 and in all the subsequent eclipses until the 
present one, but this year they were so faint as to be seen by only 
a few of the observers, while the great majority missed them en- 
seeing only a continuous spectrum. i 
