"The Heavens" are Telling" .T HE daily papers recently have been
assisting the Sun with great enthusiasm in his latest venture at publicity. There is no excuse, even for the most casual reader, for being ignorant of how, when, and where the Morning Darkness will occur. Owing, no doubt, to the skill of the Chief Wizard of Wales, the shadow will strike this island at Criecieth, travel in a north- easterly direction, and leave at Hartlepool. Snowdon, Rhyl, Southport, Preston, Settle, Richmond, Darlington, and Stockton will be along the central line of the shadow, and will therefore have the best opportunity of observing the sinister event. Stockton will have the longest to make its records, for there the eclipse will last for 24.3 seconds, an advantage of nearly three seconds over the towns of North Wales. It is only a short affair, but we must not grumble, for England has not been thus favoured since 1724, when the great astronomer Halley was alive to witness, and to record his impressions. " I forbear," he said, " to mention the Chill and Damp with which the Darkness of the Eclipse was attended, of which most Spectators were sensible and equally Judges : or the Concern that appear'd in all Sorts of Animals, Birds, Beasts, and Fishes upon the Extinction of the Sun, since ourselves could not behold it without sonic sense of Horror."
The longest period during which an eclipse can remain total is seven minutes—a very impressive space of - time for Nature's reign of terror to endure. Two hundred years must pass, however, before we shall have so long a performance in this country. If that thought makes us impatient, let us remember that no total eclipse at all will touch Great Britain until 1999. The Spectator will then, no doubt, have something more conclusive to say on the matter, for by that time spectroscopic investigation will have made strides altogether beyond the reach of our present imagination.
Questions arising from such study, however, become more and more removed from the interest and compre- hension of the laymen. The physicist and the chemist come more and more into the sunlight with their abstruse theories and calculations as to the nature, strUcture, and velocities of the various envelopes in which the core of the SIM is wrapped. Photosphere (the heart), chromosphere (the atmosphere), and corona (the veiling nimbus)—each of these is a specialist's heaven, a field for the erection of towering formulae that rival Babel. Those amateurs who arc sufficiently patient and enthus- iastic may follow a little way and gain some small initiation into the mathematical Mystery. There is the very shrine of the Delphic oracle, the secret of the strength of Apollo.
We outsiders, however, may find much aesthetic and even mystic delight in watching the externals or these heavenly geometries. Signs, and shapes, and patterns are written in space through every fraction of a second of time, the absolute articulation of pure thought, God of Gods. We may recognize, with dreadful apprehension of rightness, a progression and continuity of gesture, and feed our minds upon the revelation of a universal signature.
One of the most familiar forms in the manifestation of life is a spiral. We find it perfected in the most minute ocean shell, and in the vast universes of star- clusters about whose formations I wrote here sonic time ago. The water-spout, the maelstrom, the whirl of dust, the human aspiration, the growth of joy, all these are spirals, activities equated round their various poles of attraction. If we examine our coming eclipse of the Sun, and trace its. path over the Earth's surface, we shall find that its fragment of a circle demands further exploration in the region of time.
Such investigation has revealed the fact that eclipses have a geographical, a duration, and a recurrence relationship. That is to say, they occur in series, the members of each series being of much the same duration and all having a geometrical relationship to each other in their deposition of shadow on the Earth. Roughly speaking, this formation of series is due to the fact that with the passage of 6,585i days—about _eighteen years—the Sun, Moon, and Earth resume their positions in relation to each other. The Moon's path resumes • the same angle to the elliptic—the Sun-Earth plane. -In consequence, at .every period of 6,5851 days eclipses occur under similar geometrical conditions. There is, however, one difference in similarity. That odd third of a day means that the point of the Moon's shadow- pencil will strike the Earth at places progressively one-third further round her circumference at each succeed- ing eclipse in the series. This threatens to become dull in reading, but it is not so in fact. In addition to this movement, the various families of eclipses have a northerly or southerly motion as the Moon rises or sinks on the spring-board of her orbit. As a combined result of these circumstances—which I fear I have so clumsily explained—we find that each series of eclipses pencils- a lovely spiral of shadows, closing to, or opening from, the Poles. Each stroke is like that made by a cat's playful incurved paw as it dabs at a dangling ball of wool. • All this, however, is food for the mind's eye alone and during the event is banished, by a more nerve• touching reality. The portal of hollow radiance there in the sky, set in a dust-illumined glory which the physical eye dare not look upon. Slowly the sense, suspect signs of change. The common air and light can no longerAietaken for granted, for some treachery is at work, ■icking the familiar day. A kind of stupor creepsAteo the whole of life ; colours dim, warmth chills, -"souAds disperse. We look up, apprehending disaster, and see, suddenly, a. blunt snout sniffing at the .sun. Black with all the blackness of absolute negation of colour, it, thrusts forward, eating away the gold. At 1 tst, all that is left of the sun is a thin crescent, whose tips arc chipped and broken up into little beads. (These beads are called Bailey's Beads after the mau who first observed them.) Swiftly the crescent thins, and dis- solves, until the last bead vanishes, and the universe is shrouded in a premature death. A few stars stoop down, flickering, as through prospecting gods were lowering candle Ilames to test the poisonous air at the bottom of this well of darkness. Birds, beasts, winds, lapse into awed silence. Then slowly a bead reappears ; another ; a thin streak ; a crescent of sultry fire widens and brightens, and the dark Beast, blunt snout turned about, is shaken off, and the world sighs, wakes, and bursts into traffic and song.
Throughout the ages eclipses have haunted man. Hindus, Peruvians, Norsemen ; all castes and colours make frantic efforts to dispel that evil charm of silence. The Peruvians used to beat dogs, provoking them to howl. The Vikings banged sword on shield, while the Chinese still sound bells, drums, gongs, and trays. I have no doubt, judging by our own feelings, that even we disillusioned and scientific people, when the twenty seconds' silence comes, will set up in our hearts a great din and clamour to convince ourselves of our superior -knowledge.
111(11ARD CHURCH.
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