er,
solar eclipses hardly visible to any inhabited portion of the Earth, and
lunar eclipses where the part of the Moon's diameter obscured was less
than 1/12th.

In by-gone days several attempts were made to gather together in a
tabular or paragraph form the details of eclipses which had happened,
and some of these have been important sources of information for the
guidance of us moderns. Foremost amongst these efforts must be named the
_Almagestum Novum_ of J. B. Ricciolus.[146] This work contains a
catalogue of eclipses observed from 772 B.C. to A.D. 1647, and continued
in tables to A.D. 1700. It is prefaced (pp. 286-8) by a long series of
quotations from classical authors relating to eclipses, some few of
which have already been mentioned in these pages.

Kepler paid much attention to eclipses, and left behind him a large mass
of notes and original observations. These will be found chiefly in his
_Astronomiae Pars Optica_, c. vii. Sec. 2, originally published at Frankfurt
in 1604. The most convenient and accessible edition of this is to be
found in Frisch's reprint of all Kepler's works.[147]

Tycho Brahe also gathered together from various sources many
observations of eclipses, and combined them with a number of his own,
the whole being published in his _Historia Coelestis_.[148] Tycho Brahe
was a very interesting personage in spite of the fact that he went all
astray on the subject of the system of the Universe, and he well
deserves, what has been given to him, a book[149] all to himself. It is
peculiarly appropriate that I should give him a good word in this little
volume on eclipses, because it was the solar eclipse of Aug. 21, 1560,
which first seriously led him to take up astronomical pursuits, he being
then 14 years of age, and struck with wonder that eclipses could be
predicted.

A vast amount of historical and other information respecting eclipses
will be found in a book, the latinised name of whose author is Sethus
Calvisius. The title of the work is _Opus Chronologicum_.[150] The
historical matter is very much mixed, but the eclipses can be got hold
of through the Index, which is very full. P. Gassendi,[151] a well-known
astronomer of the 17th century, left behind him observations of many
eclipses observed by himself between 1628 and 1655. In a book entitled
_An Introduction to Universal Geography_,[152] one Nicolas Struyck in
the middle of the 18th century published a very full array of eclipse
obser