THE ECLIPSE OF LAST DECEMBER. 
By RICHARD A. PROCTOR, B.A., Hon. Sec. R.A.S., 
Author oe “The Sun,” “Other Worlds,” etc. 
A VERY remarkable degree of success rewarded those who 
undertook the long journey to the Indian Peninsula for 
the purpose of observing the eclipse of December 12. The last 
of a series of important solar eclipses — for two years must now 
elapse before eclipse expeditions are again thought of — the recent 
eclipse did not promise to add much to our knowledge of solar 
physics. The totality did not last nearly so long as in the 
great Indian eclipse of August 1868 ; the track of the moon’s 
shadow was less favourably situated ; and there were reasons for 
fearing that monsoon weather would wholly mar the prospects 
of the observers at not a few of the stations which it seemed 
desirable to occupy. As it chanced, however, favourable weather 
prevailed at all the stations in India and Ceylon, save one only, 
and the only really unfortunate event in the whole history of 
the eclipse was the complete failure of the Australian observing 
parties, stationed on the shores of the Grulf of Carpentaria. 
In summing up the results obtained during the late eclipse,, 
it seems desirable — as well to save space as to give prominence 
to the more important achievements — to discuss only those 
observations which either confirm disputed results or appear to 
establish new ones. The arrangement, therefore, which I shall 
adopt, will have reference neither to the various parties into 
which the several expeditions were distributed, nor to the com- 
plete work of particular observers, nor to the classifications of 
results as obtained by spectroscopy, polariscopy, or photography, 
but solely to the solar features which have been revealed or 
rendered more clearly discernible by the work accomplished 
last December. 
Beginning with the immediate neighbourhood of the photo- 
sphere, we find that the existence of the complex and relatively 
shallow atmosphere, whose existence was suspected by Secchi, 
but first actually demonstrated by Professor Young of America, 
has been confirmed by several of the observers of the late eclipse. 
