implores M. de Bismarck not to permit his friend
to say that her husband has travaillé pour le
roi de Prusse. This final hit is surely a mistake
in the art.

Fire often, and you are sure to bring down
something, appears to be the professor's motto.

These are among the means by which a man's
breast may be made to sparkle with diamonds.
The art, as the professor teaches it, will temp
many, when they see the red riband in a man's
button-hole, to glance at the knees of the wearer's
trousers. Lately, a pike was caught in the
Seine—so the chroniclers say—with a chevalier's
cross of the Legion of Honour hooked to
its gills. Three years ago, a lunatic drowned
himself, wearing all his decorations showing two
comforting points, namely, that weak intellect is
no impediment to progress in the arts of self-
decoration, and that a madman never loses the
sense of the value of his crosses. It was hard for
the fish, however, a French writer remarks, to
be taken so soon; the lunatic might have been
promoted!

THE COMING ECLIPSE.

THERE are a few occasions when, without
their deeds being evil, men may like darkness
better than light. We are just now envying
other nations a little bit of obscurity which is
soon about to fall to their share. We, too,
shall be in the dark during a part of the time,
but it will not be the exact sort of gloom we
want. And, as the shadow cannot come to us,
some of us must go to the shadow.

France has sent an expedition costing two
thousand pounds, to the Malacca Peninsula
(irreverently put to sea on a Friday), to observe the
total eclipse of the sun promised to the Asiatics
for August the eighteenth, but, unfortunately,
invisible in Europe. The whole duration of the
spectacle, where visible, will occur in the interval
of time between two and eight in the morning
as indicated by our clocks and watches.
Most of the European governments have
organised scientific missions to Hindostan or the
coast of Siam. That part of Asia will therefore
be the seat of a sort of competitive astronomical
congress, whose main object will be to
discover any secrets the Sun and the Moon may
let out between them.

On this occasion, as on many others, sailors
and astronomers will render each other assistance.
The former have to thank astronomy
for the means of determining their path across
the seas, and pursuing their way with certainty
and safety. The allegories of bygone days
would represent Urania as aiding In the
conquest of Neptune. On the other hand, sailors
have ever been ready to give astronomers the
benefit of their professional skill. Witness the
last two transits of Venus,* when Trench and
English navigators transported observers to
various points of the globe—to California, the
north of Finland, and the Isles of the Pacific.
Captain Cook commanded the expedition to
Otaheite, and himself took part in the
observations there.

* See A LONG LOOK-OUT, vol. xix. of ALL THIS
YEAR ROUND, p. 174.

Moreover, the French Minister of Public
Instruction and the Académie des Sciences have
confided a similar though more special errand
to an astronomer of great experience—
M. Janssen—whose attention will be particularly
directed to the spectral examination of the
eclipse, and the analysis of the solar atmosphere.
He proceeds, not to the Straits of Malacca, but
to Masulipatam, in Hindostan, on the coast of
the Bay of Bengal, where the English expedition
will also take up its quarters.

There is a further reason for this dispersion
of scientific forces. If, by ill-luck, the weather
should be bad at one station, it is to be hoped
that it will not be so at the other; and that,
somehow or somewhere, observations will be
effected. In any case, science must be the gainer
by the journey.

M. Henry de Parville, to whom we are
indebted for these and other details, states that
after the eclipse the French expedition will go
to Saïgon, in Annam, to determine the geographical
co-ordinates of that colony, and will make
certain astronomical investigations which can
be successfully pursued in those regions only.

The reason why astronomers take the trouble
to cross the seas for the sake of watching the
eclipse of the 18th of August, instead of quietly
waiting at home for the next solar eclipse that
may happen to be visible, is, that this one
promises unusual help towards the settlement of
certain questions which have been pending ever
since 1842.

It may surprise many, but it is true nevertheless,
that astronomers, in 1868, will have to do
their utmost to describe with tolerable exactness
he phenomena presented by a total eclipse of
the sun. In consequence of the short duration
of a total eclipse, and the excitement caused by
so imposing a spectacle, those eclipses have
litherto been watched imperfectly. The year
1842 presented a convenient opportunity. It
was visible in Italy and in the south of France.
To go and see it, was only a pleasant jaunt. It
was carefully observed, and, to their great
astolishment, astronomers beheld what they did
not in the least expect. Many of our readers
may remember their wonderment. At the
moment of totality, the black disc of the moon
was seen surrounded by luminous appendages,
of which nobody had ever heard a word.

In a total eclipse, the Moon, passing between
the eye and the Sun, intercepts the light of
that luminary, acting in the same way as an
opaque screen. What could be that bright
encircling glory, confused in outline, strange
in form? No astronomer could answer the
question. Astonishment at the sight
prevented their taking exact note or measurement.
The complete obscuration was soon at
an end, and the occasion was consequently lost.
They could only resolve to be better on their