The Harvard Astronomical Party in California.

The observations taken on January 1 by the Harvard party under Professor W. H. Pickering at Willows, Cal., were highly successful. The party consisted of Prof. Pickering and Messrs. S. Bayley, E. S. King and R. Black, and they, together with a number of local assistants, secured over fifty photographs. Fourteen telescopes and cameras were employed besides eight spectroscopes. The first contact was lost through clouds. The other three were observed at a duration of 11.8 seconds. Eight negatives were secured with a thirteen inch telescope, giving images two inches in diameter; nine with an eighteenth camera. Twenty-five negatives were taken to measure the brightness of the corona and surrounding; five negatives to search for inter-Mercurial planets; twenty to study the spectrum of the corona. They will reach from yellow rays to extreme ultra violet. Seven observations were made with photometer measure. The general illumination during totality was found lighter than the eclipses of 1878 and 1888. The corona was similar to those of 1868 and 1878, but showed much more detail than the latter.