ON TPIE TOTAL SOLAR P]CLTPSE OF AUGUST 29, 1880. 
345 
were closed some seconds before the end of totality. I was able to look up at the 
corona diiriug the exposure of my plates, and I watched It through the finder during 
the 40 secondwS exposure of the fourth plate. I saw no trace of a red or rosy tint in 
either chromosphere or prominences, but I remarked two exceedingly bright and 
beautiful prominences of the intensest silver whiteness. The taller of these is very 
well shown on some of my photographs. 
The light during totality was feeble, but was just barely bright enough to enable 
me to read the programme which I had written out in a bold round hand, and had 
pa.sted on the top of the coronal camera. 
After totality the Sun was covered by light cloud almost immediately, but a photo¬ 
graph was secured to give the direction of the two needles which were fixed in the 
east and west sides of the coronal camera, close to the sensitive plate; and later on 
the Sun was brought on the bottom of the slit of each of the spectroscopes and the 
plates were re-exposed for a second in order to secure a reference spectrum. 
The photographs were not developed until after the return of the expedition to 
England, when Captain Abney kindly consented to undertake the operation. No ice 
could be obtained at Carriacou, and many of the best trial plates, taken for the 
purpose of ascertaining the focus of the different cameras, had been spoiled or com¬ 
pletely lost by the heat. It was, therefore, thought unwise to run the risk of 
developing the eclipse photographs at Carriacou, and the plates were accordingly 
securely sealed up, and brought home undeveloped. 
Of the seven photographs of the corona taken with the five-foot coronal camera, 
five proved to be good, one showed some deformation of the image, and the seventh 
was spoiled. The spoiled plate was the' fourth in order of exposure, and was exposed 
for 40 seconds; the accident which rendered it useless was brought about in the 
following manner:—Mr. Drummond, the owner of the estate on which we had fixed 
our observing station, and who had been our most self-sacrificing host, had looked 
through the little telescope attached to the coronal camera during the first 80 seconds 
of totality, but immediately on the exposure of the plate in question he stepped down 
and I took his place. Unfortunately, in making the transfer in the semi-darkness, 
the instrument received a severe jar, a jar rendered the more serious by the unsatis¬ 
factory character of the gearing of the R. A. circle alluded to above. ' The clock, how¬ 
ever, drove the telescope very satisfactorily, both before and after this occurrence. 
The other plates were placed, with the photographs of tlie other observers, in the 
hands of Mr. W. H. Wesley, Assistant-Secretary of the Royal Astronomical Society, 
who has prepared a drawing from the collation of the entire series. The plates 
exposed upon the corona were supplied by Captain Abney, and were 3j; inches by 
4^ inches. 
The two spectrum plates were also supplied by Captain Abney, and were If inch 
I? inches in size. Both these unfortunately proved to be useless, for, on develop¬ 
ment, the coronal spectrum was found to be masked by an ordinary Solar spectrum. 
MDCCCLXXXIX.— A. 2 Y 
