eedingly numerous and, as I have already stated, have
proved of the highest value to astronomers who have been called upon to
investigate the ancient history of Comets.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 19: _Memoirs_, R.A.S., vol. xi. p. 47.]

[Footnote 20: Republished in the _Observatory_ Magazine, vol. xviii.
p. 323, _et seq._, 1895.]

[Footnote 21: A good deal of information respecting Chinese eclipse
records, so far as known up to the beginning of the 19th-century,
will be found in Delambre's _Histoire de l'Astronomie Ancienne_.
Paris, 1817.]

[Footnote 22: _Month. Not._, R.A.S., vol. xxiv. p. 41.]

CHAPTER IX.

ARE ECLIPSES ALLUDED TO IN THE BIBLE?

An interesting question has been suggested: Are there any allusions to
eclipses to be found in Holy Scripture? It seems safe to assert that
there is at least one, and that there may be three or four.

In Amos viii. 9 we read:--"I will cause the Sun to go down at noon, and I
will darken the Earth in the clear day." This language is so very
explicit and applies so precisely to the circumstances of a solar
eclipse that commentators are generally agreed that it can have but one
meaning;[23] and accordingly it is considered to refer without doubt to
one or other of the following eclipses:--791 B.C., 771 B.C., 770 B.C., or
763 B.C. Archbishop Usher,[24] the well-known chronologist, suggested
the first three more than two centuries ago, whilst the eclipse of 763
B.C. was suggested in recent times and is now generally accepted as the
one referred to. The circumstances connected with the discovery and
identification of the eclipse of 763 B.C. are very interesting.

The date when Amos wrote is set down in the margin of our Bibles as 787
B.C. and if this date is correct it follows that for his statement to
have been a prediction he must be alluding to some eclipse of later date
than 787 B.C. This obvious assumption not only shuts out the eclipse of
791 B.C., but opens the door to the acceptance of the eclipse of 763
B.C.

Apparently the first modern writer who looked into the matter after
Archbishop Usher was the German commentator Hitzig who suggested the
eclipse of Feb. 9, 784 B.C. Dr. Pusey was so far taken with this idea
that he thought it worth while to secure the co-operation of the Rev. R.
Main, F.R.A.S., the Radcliffe Observer at Oxford, for the purpose of a
full investigation. Mr.