re malicious than we now are--because we have noted a
steady tolerance creeping into our attitude--if astronomers are not to
blame, but are only correlates to a dominant--we advertised a predicted
eclipse that did not occur at all. Now, without any especial feeling,
except that of recognition of the fate of all attempted absolutism, we
give the instance, noting that, though such an evil thing to orthodoxy,
it was orthodoxy that recorded the non-event.

_Monthly Notices of the R.A.S._, 8-132:

"Remarkable appearances during the total eclipse of the moon on March
19, 1848":

In an extract from a letter from Mr. Forster, of Bruges, it is said
that, according to the writer's observations at the time of the
predicted total eclipse, the moon shone with about three times the
intensity of the mean illumination of an eclipsed lunar disk: that the
British Consul, at Ghent, who did not know of the predicted eclipse, had
written enquiring as to the "blood-red" color of the moon.

This is not very satisfactory to what used to be our malices. But
there follows another letter, from another astronomer, Walkey, who
had made observations at Clyst St. Lawrence: that, instead of an
eclipse, the moon became--as is printed in italics--"most beautifully
illuminated" ... "rather tinged with a deep red"... "the moon being
as perfect with light as if there had been no eclipse whatever."

I note that Chambers, in his work upon eclipses, gives Forster's letter
in full--and not a mention of Walkey's letter.

There is no attempt in _Monthly Notices_ to explain upon the notion of
greater distance of the moon, and the earth's shadow falling short,
which would make as much trouble for astronomers, if that were not
foreseen, as no eclipse at all. Also there is no refuge in saying that
virtually never, even in total eclipses, is the moon totally dark--"as
perfect with light as if there had been no eclipse whatever." It is said
that at the time there had been an aurora borealis, which might have
caused the luminosity, without a datum that such an effect, by an
aurora, had ever been observed upon the moon.

But single instances--so an observation by Scott, in the Antarctic. The
force of this datum lies in my own acceptance, based upon especially
looking up this point, that an eclipse nine-tenths of totality has great
effect, even though the sky be clouded.

Scott (_Voyage of the Discovery_, vol. ii, p. 215):

"There may have been an eclipse of th