y white, and exhibited a violent undulating or trembling
motion, its general appearance varying in the briefest space. The light of
the halo was intensest near the covered solar rim. Its brilliance at
Lipezk was so great, that the naked eye could hardly look on it, and some
of the observers almost doubted whether the sun had really altogether
disappeared. At Vienna, Milan, and Perpignan, on the contrary, the
observers found the light of the halo resembling that of the moon toward
its full. Bell, at Verona, who found time to estimate its intensity,
ascertained it to be one-seventh of that of the full moon. Its first
traces were noticed from 3 to 5 seconds before the entrance of the entire
eclipse; in like manner, its last vestiges disappeared only some seconds
after the eclipse was over. Vivid, however, as its light was, the halo
cast but an extremely faint shadow. Some, indeed, who particularly
directed their attention to it, could not detect any. But this might have
been owing to those places on which the shadows would have fallen being
faintly illumined by the reddish light of the horizon before mentioned. In
other respects, during the progress of the eclipse, before and after its
maximum, not the least change was observable in the uncovered part of the
sun's disk. The cusps were as sharp and distinctly-marked as possible, the
lunar mountains were projected on the sun's surface with the most
beautiful distinctness and precision, and the color and brilliance of his
disk, in the proximity of the moon's rim, were in no way diminished or
altered. In short, nothing was seen which could be referred in the
smallest degree to a lunar atmosphere.

All these phenomena, striking as they were, were such as the assembled
observers were prepared for; for they were such as had already been
noticed during previous eclipses of the sun. But there was one of quite a
different character, as mysterious as it was novel to them. This was the
appearance of large reddish projections within the halo on the dark rim.
The different observers characterized it by the expressions--"red clouds,
volcanoes, flames, fire-sheaves," &c.; terms intended of course merely to
indicate the phenomenon, and not in any way to explain it. The observers
differed in their reports both with respect to the number of these "red
clouds," as well as to their apparent heights. Arago stated that he
observed two rose-colored projections which seemed to be unchangeable, and