ECL 
broader ; and the two opposite dark parts 
uniting into one, and swallowing up the 
southern enlightened part. 
“As at the beginning the shade came feel- 
ingly upon our right shoulders, so now the 
light from the north, where it opened as it 
were; though I could discern no defined 
light or shade upon the earth that way, 
which I earnestly watched for, yet it was 
manifestly by degrees, and with oscillations, 
going back a little, and quickly advancing 
further, till at length upon the first lucid 
point appearing in the heavens, where the 
sun was, I could distinguish pretty plainly a 
rim of light runnmg along side of us a good 
while together, or sweeping by at our el- 
bows from west to east, just then having 
good reason to suppose the totality ended 
with us, I looked on my watch and found 
it to be full three minutes and a half more. 
Now the hill tops changed their black into 
blue again, and I could distinguish a hori- 
zon where the centre of darkness was be- 
fore ; the men cried out they saw the cop- 
ped hill again, which they had eagerly look- 
ed for; but still it continued dark to the 
south-east, yet I cannot say that ever the 
horizon that way was undistinguishable ; 
immediately we heard the larks chirping, 
and singing very briskly, for joy of the re- 
stored luminary, after all things had been 
bushed into a most profound and universal 
silence. The heavens and earth now ap- 
peared exactly like morning before sun-rise, 
of a greyish cast, but rather more blue in- 
terspersed; and the earth, so far as the 
verge of the hill reached, was of a dark- 
green or russet colour. 
“ As soon as the sun emerged, the clouds 
grew thicker, and the light was very little 
amended for a minute or more, like a 
cloudy morning slowly advancing. After 
about the middle of the totality, and so af- 
ter the emersion of the sun, we saw Venus 
very plainly, but no other star. Salisbury 
steeple now appeared. The clouds never 
removed, so that we could take no account 
of it afterward, but in the evening it light- 
ened very much. I hasted home to write 
this letter; and the impression was so vivid 
upon my mind, that I am sure, I could for 
some days after have wrote the same ac- 
count of it, and very precisely. After sup- 
per I made a drawing of it from my imagi- 
nation, upon the same paper I had taken a 
prospect of the country before. 
“ I must confess to you, that I was (I 
believe) the only person in England that 
ECL 
regi'etted not the cloudiness of the day, 
which added so much to the solemnity of 
the sight, and which incomparably exceed- 
ed, in my apprehension, that of 1715, which 
I saw very perfectly from the top of Bos- 
ton steeple, in Lincolnshire, where the air 
w^as very clear; but the night of this was 
more complete and dreadful: there, in- 
deed, I saw both sides of the shadow come 
from a great distance, and pass beyond us 
to a great distance ; but this eclipse had 
much more of variety and majestic terror ; 
so that I cannot but felicitate myself upon 
the opportunity of seeing these two rare ac- 
cidents of natui’e, in so different a manner : 
yet I should willingly have lost this plea- 
sure for your more valuable advantage of 
perfecting the noble theory of the celestial 
bodies, which last time you gave the world 
so nice a calculation of; and wish the sky 
had now as much favoured us for an addL 
tion to your honour and great skill, which 
I doubt not to be as exact in this as be- 
fore.” 
ECLICTA, in bot^y, a genus of the 
Syngenesia Polygamia Superflua class and 
order. Natural order of Compound Flow- 
ers. Coryinbifer®, Jussieu. Essential cha- 
racter : receptacle chaffy ; down none ; co- 
rollets of the disk four-cleft. Tliere are 
five species, natives of the East and West 
Indies. 
ecliptic, in astronomy, a great circle 
of the sphere, supposed to be drawn through 
the middle of the zodiac, making an angle 
with the equinoctial of about 23“ 30', which 
is the sun’s greatest declination : or, more 
strictly speaking, it is that path or way 
among the fixed stars, that the earth ap- 
pears to describe, to an eye placed in the 
sun. 
By a long series of observations, the 
shepherds of Asia were able to mark out 
the sun’s path in the heavens; he being 
always in the opposite point to that 
which comes to the meridian at midnight 
with equal, but opposite declination. Thus 
they could tell the stars among which the 
sun then was, although they could not see 
them. They discovered that this path was 
a great circle of the heavens, afterwards 
called the ecliptic; which cuts the equator 
in two opposite points, dividing it, and be- 
ing divided by it into two equal parts. 
They farther observed, that when the sun 
was in either of these points of intersection, 
his circle of diurnal revolution coincided 
with the equator, and therefore the days 
