my conclusions, and shall deal with the more general interest of individual eclipses.
We must remember that, because an eclipse of the Sun is total, if at all, on a part of the earth's surface only, we can calculate and draw on the map a band or zone of total eclipse, and, if an observer is known to have seen a total eclipse, we know that he must have been within that zone. In this way an eclipse of the Sun may give a student of history some information beyond a mere date.
It is only in ancient times that we find that individual eclipses have become embedded in literature and history. Later records of eclipses are more numerous, but have a less interesting setting, and are for the most part unimportant both for chronological and for astronomical purposes.
The Shû King Eclipse.
We have early Babylonian documents giving the astrological interpretation of eclipses, but the earliest historical reference to an eclipse so far as I know is to be found in the Chinese work, entitled Shû King, or Book of Historical Documents. This work is a collection of public speeches and proclamations, with a few songs here and there, beginning in the reign of the emperor Yao, whom the received chronology places in the twenty-fourth century before Christ, and closing with a speech by Duke Mû in B.C. 625. The documents, which were selected not for their historical value, but for the moral principles which they express, are sometimes accompanied by a brief explanatory statement of the circumstances in which they were issued, but the collection contains no continuous historical narrative and no attempt at chronology. Nor does any other early Chinese work supply this deficiency. The use of
