Page:History of the Royal Astronomical Society (1923).djvu/198

 170 HISTORY OF THE [1870-80 On December 6 the Urgent left Portsmouth, taking three parties, made up chiefly of Fellows of the Society under the leadership of the Rev. S. Perry, Captain Parsons, R.E., and Mr. Huggins, bound respectively for Cadiz, Gibraltar, and Oran, in Algeria, and with them were Professor and Mrs. S. Newcomb. Another expedition under the leadership of Mr. Lockyer, comprising amongst others, Professor Roscoe, Mr. Darwin, Mr. Vignoles, and Mr. Ranyard, went by overland route to Naples, and left that port to cross to Catania (Sicily) in H.M.S. Psyche. Unfortunately the vessel struck on a rock near Catania, but all hands, and the instruments, were saved without injury. Lord Lindsay, who was not then a Fellow of the Society, took an observing party at his own expense to Cadiz. On the day of the eclipse the sky was more or less obscured by cloud at all the stations. At Cadiz and at Syracuse successful photographs of the corona were obtained, as well as some spectrum and polarisation observations, but at Oran nothing was seen of the eclipse at totality. The photographs of the corona taken at Syracuse by Mr. Brothers with a rapid rectilinear photographic lens, showed great extensions and were considered specially successful. As indication of the state of knowledge of the sun's surroundings at the time, it may be remarked that at the meeting in 1870 June a paper by Mr. Seabroke " On the determination whether the Corona is a Terrestrial or Solar Phenomenon," led to a discussion on this fundamental point in Solar Astronomy. Mr. Lockyer 's " theory of a terrestrial origin of the corona " was spoken of, the reference probably being to an article by him in the first number of Nature, in which he said, " Since that time I confess the conviction, that the corona is nothing else than an effect, due to the passage of sunlight through our own atmosphere near the moon's place, has been growing stronger and stronger." Dr. Gould, the American astronomer, who was at the meeting, spoke of his observations during the eclipse of 1869 August 7, and said that he thought the symmetry of the corona about the sun's axis of rotation pointed to the fact that it was of solar origin, and that the trapezoidal corona might be nothing more than the chromosphere seen under unusually favourable circumstances, but he was inclined to think that the light outside that four-cornered corona which appeared to shift in position was an effect of our atmosphere. The Society as a body took a less active part in the arrange- ments for the observation of the solar eclipse of 1871 December 12, on which occasion the line of totality crossed India, Ceylon, and Australia. The subject was brought before the Council at their meeting in June, when it was at first suggested that the Indian arrangements should be left in the hands of Mr. Pogson,