have enabled astronomers to have hunted up the comet at
sunset or sunrise on the days immediately following the eclipse. As it
happened, however, the comet was not seen again in 1882, and, so far as
we know, may never be seen again.

It was not till 1889 that a complete organisation of a telegraph service
in connection with an eclipse was accomplished. The eclipse of January 1
of that year began in the Pacific and the line of totality touched land
in California, passing across North America to Manitoba. The first
Californian station was at Willows, and was occupied by a party from
Harvard College Observatory, who were supplied with an unusually
complete equipment of photographic apparatus, together with a large
camera for charting all the stars in the neighbourhood of the Sun, so as
to detect an Intra-Mercurial planet if one existed. The telegraph scheme
which had to be worked out was somewhat complicated, and one of the
chief actors in the scene has furnished a fairly full account of what
was done. First of all, a complete list of the instruments and of the
work proposed to be done by them had to be prepared. The weather
probabilities being everywhere very unsatisfactory, there was a
possibility of all degrees of success or failure, and one thing which
had to be prearranged for each station was a cypher code which should be
available for all the likely combinations of instruments, weather and
results. It was found that about one hundred words would suffice for the
necessary code, including words which would indicate in a sufficiently
precise manner the position of any new planet which a photograph might
disclose.

The following, being a part of the code prescribed for use at Willows,
will serve to indicate the nature of the whole scheme:--

_Africa_, Perfectly clear throughout the whole eclipse.
_Alaska_, Perfectly clear during totality.
_Belgium_, Clear sky for the partial phases, but cloudy for totality.
_Bolivia_, Entirely cloudy throughout the whole eclipse.
_Brazil_, Observed all the contacts.
_Bremen_, Observed three of the contacts.
_Ceylon_, Made observations on the shadow-bands.
_Chili_, Observed lines of the reversing layer visually.
_China_, The Corona showed great detail.
_Cork_, Obtained 40-50 negatives during totality.
_Corsica_, Obtained 50-60 negatives during totality.
_Crimea_, Obtained 60-70 negatives during totality.
_Cuba_, Observed a comet.

Upwards of twenty codes were prepa