368 
PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OP WASHINGTON. 
some of the arguments made before committees of the Senate and 
House. [Not published.] 
In the discussion following the papers Messrs. Tittmann, 
Clarke, Eimbeck, Wead, Walcott, and the speakers partici¬ 
pated. 
529th Meeting. February 2, 1901. 
President Walcott in the chair. 
Fifty-five persons present. 
The evening was devoted to Reports on the Solar Eclipse of 
May 28, 1900. 
Mr. S. P. Langley reported on The Smithsonian observations 
in North Carolina, exhibiting many lantern slides of the appa¬ 
ratus used and superb photographs of the corona and sky. Three 
results were of special interest: direct negatives of the moon were 
taken up to 15 inches in diameter; the bolometric work per¬ 
formed by Mr. Abbot showed the heat from the corona to be but 
5/85 of that received, from the full moon; and the sky-photo- 
graphs were on such a scale as to show an intra-mercurial planet, 
if one existed, 1/100 the diameter of Mercury, while a body of 
five times this diameter could not be detected with certainty dur¬ 
ing a transit over the sun’s disc. Mr. Abbot with a small party 
is to leave at once for Sumatra, charged among other things with 
obtaining similar sk}^-photographs. [Published as a preliminary 
report in Science, vol. xi, p. 974 (1900), and Smithsonian Report 
for 1900, p. 149. Final report by Astrophysical Observatory 
(Sm. Pub. No. 1439), 1904, 26 pp. with pi.] 
Mr. S. J. Brown, of the Naval Observatory, showed slides 
from some of the photographs taken by his party in North Caro¬ 
lina, those of the flash-spectrum being especially interesting, and 
other slides from Mr. Burkhard’s photographs in which the 
outer portions of the corona had a progressively longer exposure 
than the inner parts. [See the references above.] 
Mr. L. A. Bauer reported on The Coast and Geodetic Survey 
magnetic observations during the late eclipse. Records from 
several stations within and without the belt of totality showed 
