SCIENTIFIC SUMHAEY. 
193 
that it was). But as yet we had no proof that Lieut. Brown’s drawing, 
excellent as it was in itself, was more trustworthy in a scientific sense than 
those many wild pictures of total eclipses which have caused ere now so 
much perplexity. 
Presently came a paper from Mr. Lockyer (who had unfortunately not 
been favoured with a view of the eclipse), summing up the evidence which 
had reached him — seemingly in a very imperfect form. His conclusion 
was that the inner and brighter part of the corona certainly belongs to the 
sun, the outer fainter and radiated portion being, he judged, as certainly 
atmospheric. He founded this opinion on the difference which could be 
discerned between the various pictures of the coronal radiations. 
But the end was not yet. A photograph taken by Mr. Willard (an Ame- 
rican observer), in Spain, had been found to show the great Y-shaped gap 
which has been already referred to as seen by observing parties at widely- 
separated Spanish stations ; and by about this time the tardy news of Mr. 
Brothers’ success had reached his friends in England, who hastened to 
announce it as publicly as possible. He had taken six photographs, and in 
the fifth u the corona is seen,” he wrote, “ as it was never shown on glass 
before.” Would the Y-shaped gap be there P This was the thought which 
occurred to all who understood the position of the vexata questio. At length 
copies of his negative were sent to astronomers ; and there the great gap 
was seen — unmistakably the most remarkable feature of the picture. Two 
other rifts, fainter and not reaching so far towards the sun’s limb, were well 
shown ; and on a reference to the American photograph it was found that 
there also, though less clearly, the place of these rifts could be discerned. 
In Lieut. Brown’s picture, and in a picture taken by Professor Watson in 
Sicily, the corresponding depressions of the inner and brighter part of the 
corona were clearly indicated in corresponding situations. When it is added 
that in Mr. Brothers’ photograph the radiations extend on one side to more 
than half a degree from the place of the eclipsed sun, and on the other nearly 
a degree, the decisive character of the evidence this noble picture has given 
will be immediately recognised. 
It would seem, however, that an imperfect drawing of this photograph 
had been sent to Mr. Lockyer, who found the place of the great gap — as 
determined by two prominences — not strictly coincident with the place it 
occupies in the American photograph. Comparing this imperfect drawing 
with the photograph, in company with the American professors (Young and 
Winlock), he came to the conclusion (from which they did not wholly at that 
time dissent) that the gaps photographed by Mr. Willard and Mr. Brothers 
were different phenomena. Accordingly, in a second paper on the eclipse, 
he renewed the statement that the outer part of the corona is terrestrial. 
But already photographic copies of the two negatives had been made to a 
common scale. Only a day or so afterwards, Professor Winlock examined 
such copies in company with Dr. Huggins, and expressed the opinion that 
the two great gaps are certainly the same in the American photograph and 
Mr. Brothers’ — the two fainter ones probably so, but too faint for certainty. 
Sir John Herschel received similar copies, and in a letter read by Mr. 
Brothers at the meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society on March 10 ? 
the veteran astronomer expressed his conviction that the coincidence of so 
