1871.] The Eclipse of Last December. 243 



In the first place, tjie situation of the great V-shaped gap 

 is clearly defined, and unmistakably agrees with what is 

 seen in the American photograph. There are the notches 

 showing the places of the two prominences equally distant 

 from the apex of the gap. And if any doubt could exist as 

 to these two notches — or rather the prominences they indi- 

 cate — being the same as those in the American photograph, 

 that doubt would be removed by the agreement of the other 

 prominence-notches — all round the moon's disc. 



Again, the two other gaps or rifts, which are but faintly 

 indicated in the American photograph, are plainly shown in 

 Mr. Brothers's. We see also why they are less clearly seen 

 in the former. They do not extend so far in towards 

 the sun's globe, and are banked up, as it were, all round by 

 masses of the bright inner corona. Their agreement in 

 position with the indications of the American photograph, 

 as also with what can be recognised of these delicate pheno- 

 mena in Lieutenant Brown's drawing, cannot be questioned. 



Let it further be noted that the agreement of the features 

 of the inner corona as shown in the two photographs is even 

 greater than was to have been anticipated when the un- 

 doubted effect of atmospheric illumination, in blurring and 

 even in part modifying the details, is carefully attended to.* 

 Here again, too, the accuracy of Lieutenant Brown's drawing 

 is surprisingly confirmed. I use the italicised word advisedly, 

 for it has very seldom happened that the corona has been 

 satisfactorily delineated even when practised draughtsmen 

 have attempted the work. 



But two features remain to be specially noticed. 



In the first place, the disc of the moon is not perfectly 

 round but obviously compressed from east to west.t If the 

 moon in the American view were similarly distorted, we 

 might be led to ascribe this to some peculiarity arising from 

 the moon's motion from west to east across the sun's face. 

 But as the American drawing shows only a glare of light 

 on the moon's eastern and western limbs, this explanation 



* Mr. Brothers having kindly sent me copies both of his own photograph 

 and the American one (the former enlarged to the scale of the latter) I had hoped 

 to provide chalk drawings for the engraver, and so to have preserved the 

 originals for my own use. But I was foiled in this, by the fact that I found 

 myself quite unable to reproduce the close resemblance which exists between 

 the two photographs. Even when I made both drawings from one photograph, 

 the resulting views were-not so similar as the two originals. As I write, I have 

 not seen the proofs ; but I fear that no engraver, however skilful, can make the 

 two pictures so like as to give a sufficient idea of the evidence they really afford. 



f The drawings are placed about as the sun actually appeared from the 

 Syracusan station; so that east and west correspond respectively to the left and 

 right sides of the drawings. 



