VISUAL, GRATING AND GLASS-LENS, SOLAR SPECTRUM. 523 



sky-larks and wood-peckers the principal birds. Noble landscapes of English 

 kind on every side, teeming with well preserved objects of even higher than 

 Saxon antiquity. Roman roads shooting straight over hill and dale, and tumuli 

 of aboriginal Britons far older still. While the primeval soil itself, wherever 

 opened, shows virgin white ; and nothing gets smirched in that fair champaign 

 with either smut, or soot, or any appreciable coal smoke. 



In the largest upper chamber therefore, of a new country house, by name 

 " Kurn Hattin " (for every house there, even in the town streets seems to have 

 a name) and about two miles North of Winchester, which my Wife and I engaged 

 for the time, the rather unwieldy spectroscope was set up, with its heliostat 

 looking out of a window towards the South-east ; and where, when clouds 

 permitted, the sun could be conveniently commanded at the summer solstice 

 from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., at an average altitude say of 45°. Suitable therefore 

 for both solar originated lines, and those produced by the higher telluric 

 atmosphere whether natural or adventitious. 



Seldom however, through the two months of observation, June and July, 

 did the far too frequent clouds permit of anything being seen except themselves ; 

 and little would have been accomplished unless by utilising every moment of 

 occasional or even partial break ; and sometimes even by observing through the 

 thinner clouds, though that was very untoward for securing the fainter lines. 

 At the same time the heliostat, employed for bringing the solar rays whenever 

 they were visible, to the grating, being only the same rude, hand-worked affair 

 I had taken before to Lisbon and Madeira, required the services of an assistant 

 in rapid observation. Well too had I been assisted therein at both those foreign 

 stations, by my Wife's patient enthusiasm, and enduring skill. But through 

 almost the whole of our stay at Kurn Hattin she was unfortunately laid up 

 with severe, even dangerous illness ; and the observing conditions would have 

 gone too heavily against me, but for a circumstance as unexpected, as it proved 

 appropriate, grateful, and effective. 



This was, — that the country-house next to us, was occupied by Colonel 

 Knight, an officer recently retired after a long and honourable period of active 

 service in tropical climates. But now he was prosecuting to his heart's content 

 Meteorology of the most careful and conscientious kind, — while he rejoiced also 

 in the possession of an Astronomical Observatory built by himself, furnished 

 with both Transit Instrument and magnificent Equatorial by Cooke, and was 

 both F.RA.S. and F.R.M.S. 



This gentleman then most obligingly gave me the utmost aid in working the 

 heliostat. For whenever there was the slightest chance of seeing the sun, he 

 would come over to Kurn Hattin, sit out the most perverse clouds until sun- 

 shine broke at length ; and then he would keep any solar image visible at all, — 

 and more particularly the same colour region in the preliminary spectrum 



