gods. By way of appeasing the gods, and of suitably
punishing the two State officials for their neglect and personal
misconduct, they were forthwith put to death, a punishment which may be
said to have been somewhat excessive, in view of the fact that the
eclipse was not a total but only a partial one. An anonymous verse
runs:--

Here lie the bodies of Ho and Hi,
Whose fate though sad was visible--
Being hanged because they could not spy
Th' eclipse which was invisible.

It appears beyond all reasonable doubt that the eclipse in question
occurred on October 22, 2136 B.C. The preliminary difficulties to be
got over in arriving at the date arose from the fact that there was an
uncertainty of 108 years in the date when the Emperor Chung-K'ang
ascended the throne; and within these limits of time there were 14
possible years in which an eclipse of the Sun in Fang could have
occurred. Then the number was further limited by the necessity of
finding an eclipse which could have been seen at the place which was the
Emperor's capital. The site of this, again, was a matter of some
uncertainty. However, step by step, by a judicious process of
exhaustion, the year 2136 B.C. was arrived at as the alternative to the
previously received date of 2128 B.C. Considering that we are dealing
with a matter which happened full 4000 years ago, it may fairly be said
that this discrepancy is not perhaps much to be wondered at, seeing what
disputes often happen nowadays as to the precise date of events which
may have occurred but a few years or even a few months before the
controversy springs up.

Professor Russell says that:--"Some admirers of the Chinese cite this
eclipse as a proof of the early proficiency attained by the Chinese in
astronomical calculations. I find no ground for that belief in the text.
Indeed, for many centuries later, the Chinese were unable to predict the
position of the Sun accurately among the stars. They relied wholly on
observation to settle their calendar, year by year, and seem to have
drawn no conclusions or deductions from their observations. Their
calendar was continually falling into confusion. Even at the beginning
of this dynasty, when the Jesuits came to China, the Chinese
astronomers were unable to calculate accurately the length of the shadow
of the Sun at the equinoxes and solstices. It seems to me therefore very
improbable that they could have been able to calculate and predict
ecli