PAST AND COMING TBANSITS AND AECTIC EXPLOKATION. 269 
to watch for. The eye-observations of contact, therefore, do not 
present results of extreme value.” Lieutenant Noble, at the 
same station, describes the phenomenon as follows: — “From 
about 10 min. of the time of internal contact I kept the tele- 
scope pointed on the sun’s limb. While thus watching I was 
astonished to see, most distinctly, the disc of the planet com- 
plete, and immediately asked Lieutenant Shakespear what time 
remained before contact. He said a little over 5 min.” Mr. 
Nichol, at Honolulu, writes : — 44 To my astonishment I saw a 
completion of light round the planet perfectly distinct, and 
such as I should have said, from previous model contact, was 
immediately after contact. I got this time recorded as the first 
observation of contact by seeing the continuous narrow band of 
light. I remained looking at it about two minutes, but could 
see no instantaneous phenomenon of contact, nor black drop.” 
He supposed the peculiarity due to light from the solar corona ; 
but, under the conditions of observation, that explanation is 
quite untenable. We cannot wonder to find Captain Tupman 
mentioning that Mr. Nichol recorded a time forty-seven seconds 
earlier than he did himself. Captain Tupman says further that 
44 there was nothing sudden to note ” (as had been expected), 
44 and the complete submergence was so gradual, anyone might 
have recorded ten seconds before I did, and have been probably 
quite as accurate. My first impression was [that] such an 
observation could not possess any value. It was something 
similar in principle to having to decide where the zodiacal 
light terminates ! bearing in mind, of course, that we expected 
to get the contact within a second or so of time.” 
We can understand, then, the justice of the remark in the 
recently issued 44 Report to the Board of Visitors of the Green- 
wich Observatory,” that while 44 there has been little annoyance 
from the dreaded 4 black drop ’ ” (Mr. Stone’s bugbear), 44 greater 
inconvenience and doubt have been caused by the unexpected 
luminous ring round Venus;” though why the phenomenon 
should have been unexpected, when Maskelyne, himself an 
astronomer-royal, recorded it so distinctly in 1769, is left 
unexplained. A very small amount of labour given to the 
examination of the records of former transits would have pre- 
vented this well-known phenomenon from taking the observers 
by surprise ; or, perhaps better, would have suggested that 
contact observations were little likely to be of use. 
It may be well to supplement the above account by quoting 
the description of the same phenomenon as seen at St. Paul’s 
Island, one of the 44 inaccessible if not absolutely mythical 
islands” of our Admiralty authorities, which the French (not 
usually regarded as more essentially nautical than we are) 
