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stations should be occupied, one on the Sandwich Islands group, 
and another at Tahiti, the Americans thought of occupying 
Owhyhee, rejecting as disadvantageous the suggested Tahitan 
station. But since then the idea of having any Delislean 
stations has been abandoned, and, as just mentioned, the five 
remaining stations are all to be in the southern Halleyan region, 
the adequate manning of which I urged so warmly last year. 
“ The Swatara” says an American paper, “ the vessel which is 
to convey the various southern observing parties to their 
stations,” sailed from New York during the first week of June, 
and is “ to lay in provisions at Cape Town, as well as a supply 
of hens for the sake of their eggs, wherewith to albumenise the 
photograph plates. Then a party will, weather permitting, be 
left at the Crozet and Kerguelen Islands. As in frequent 
conditions of the wind access to the Crozet Islands is impossible, 
enough provisions will be left with the observers, and possible 
prisoners, to last them a whole year. From Kerguelen the vessel 
will sail to Hobart Town, thence to Bluff Harbour, in New 
Zealand, and thence to Chatham Island, the last southern point 
of observation, which is either uninhabited or else inhabited by 
cannibals. Here the Swatara will remain till the transit is 
over, and will then, the possible cannibals allowing, revisit the 
various ' stations to take up the different parties, supposing 
them to be found.” “ Each station will be provided with four 
principal instruments : The photographic telescope just 
described, with a 5-inch object-glass corrected for the actinic 
rays, and forty feet focal length ; a telescope of five inches 
aperture and eight feet focal length, equatorially mounted for 
the observation of contacts ; a transit instrument for the 
determination of time and geographical position ; and an 
astronomical clock. The telescopes, both visual and photo- 
graphic, have been ordered from the well-known firm of Alvan, 
Clark, and Sons, who have just completed and mounted at 
Washington the greatest refracting telescope in the world. 
Although the photographic method is mainly relied on, the 
eye-observations of ingress and egress are not to be neglected, 
and it is proposed to supplement them by measuring the 
distances of the cusps while the planet is entering the sun’s 
disc and leaving it.” This last point I regard as one of 
extreme importance, as will be gathered from my remarks on 
the subject in “The Sun,” and in the Monthly Notices of the 
Astronomical Society, vol. xxx. p. 46 et seq. 
While all the American stations, as well northern as 
southern, are Halleyan, the English stations were for the most 
part selected originally as Delislean. In fact it is a rather 
startling circumstance that the Astronomer-Royal, in his 
original description (Monthly Notices, vol. xxix. pp. 36, 37) 
