interest Serpens and Draco in the skies, would be sufficient to induce him to journey all the way to Paraguay in expectation of becoming acquainted with their terrestrial representatives, possibly on closer terms than he could desire.
In Brazil, where the astronomical conditions are of the best, the risk of clouds was considerable. It seems that about half of the days in April on the coast at Para Cura are likely to be obscured. Fortunately, however, the observers were favoured with good weather. Pains had also been taken to determine the chances of cloudiness at this season along the Atlantic track followed by the shadow. They showed that the probability of a clear sky at mid- day in April at any point along the track followed by the eclipse from Ceara, where the central line leaves the coast in Brazil, to Gambia, on the other side of the Atlantic, is about one half.
It was not possible to obtain any very definite information as to the extent of April cloudiness in the interior parts of Africa which were passed over by the lunar shadow ere it finally quitted the earth. It seems, however, impossible to doubt that an expedition might have been despatched to some locality in the far interior of Senegal or the Sahara, where the atmospheric conditions would have been excellent. A continuous chain of observations of the corona would then have been available from the time the sun was rising on the coast of South America to the time of sunset in Sahara. The great advantage of such an expedition would have been that it would have afforded an opportunity for testing in the completest manner whether the corona submitted to these rapid changes in the few hours to which we have already
