132 
POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
In Sicily. 
At Terranova 
Carlentini 
Syracuse 
Augusta 
Villamonda 
Catania 
Etna 
(Italian commission (Professor Denza) 
1 and others) .... } Partial success 
(American observers (Professor Watson) 
t and others) [successful 
[ partial success 
American observers (Professors Hark- 
ness and Eastman) . 
English expedition detachment (Mr. ) success f u i 
' Brothers) ..... j 
rltalian Commission (Padre Secchi and) 
J others ) • • • • • Lartialsucc 
j English detachment (under Professor U 
l W. G. Adams) . ... J 
English detachment (under Mr. Eanyard) successful 
English detachment (under Mr. Lockyer) no success 
(English detachment (under Professor) 
1 Roscoe) j 
no success 
In this tabulation the ill fortunes of the English observers 
are plainly apparent. Yet so far as securing observations is 
concerned there has been a good deal of success, and in the end 
it matters little who achieved it. How far the observations 
will go in settling the questions at issue we shall presently 
endeavour to examine. 
But, in the meantime, let us remember that a solar eclipse is 
an occasion for observations other than those relating to the 
sun’s constitution and surroundings. When the moon passes 
between us and the sun, and appears as a black body on his 
disc, an opportunity is offered of making a determination of 
the moon’s place at a critical part of her orbit. Ordinarily we 
cannot see the moon for a day or two on either side of conjunc- 
tion, and the observations which are desirable for determining 
the errors of her predicted positions at such times are there- 
fore wanting. The continuity of the watch which is kept upon 
the moon’s intricate motions at a great observatory — Greenwich, 
for instance — is broken at this period of every lunation, except 
when an eclipse is visible from the observatory, and then the 
black moon can be observed upon the sun just as the bright 
moon is observed upon the sky. In less accurate times than 
the present this observation was simply made by noting the 
instants of beginning and ending of the eclipse ; but there is 
so much uncertainty, depending chiefly upon the dimensions 
of the instruments employed, in noting these instants, that the 
data thus procured are rarely made use of.* Occasionally an old 
* Amateurs often betray great anxiety to secure the accurate times of 
first and last contacts in observing solar eclipses (the late eclipse offered 
abundant instances). Under the best of circumstances those times are of 
