_April 25th._—Nature seems to welcome our arrival, not only by her most genial, but also by her exceptional moods. There has been to-day an eclipse of the sun, total at Cape Frio, sixty miles from here, almost total here. We saw it from the deck of the ship, not having yet taken up our quarters in town. The effect was as strange as it was beautiful. There was a something weird, uncanny in the pallor and chill which came over the landscape; it was not in the least like a common twilight, but had a ghastly, phantom-like element in it. Mr. Agassiz passed the morning at the palace where the Emperor had invited him to witness the eclipse from his observatory. The clouds are poor courtiers, however, and unfortunately a mist hung over San Christovāo, obscuring the phenomenon at the moment of its greatest interest. Our post of observation was better for this special occasion than the Imperial observatory, and yet, though the general scene was perhaps more effective in the harbor than on the shore, Mr. Agassiz had an opportunity of making some interesting observations on the action of animals under these novel circumstances. The following extract is from his notes. “The effect of the waning light on animals was very striking. The bay of Rio is daily frequented by large numbers of frigate-birds and gannets, which at night fly to the outer islands to roost, while the carrion-crows (_urubús_) swarming in the suburbs, and especially about the slaughterhouses of the city, retire to the mountains in the neighborhood of Tijuca, their line of travel passing over San Christovāo. As soon as the light began to diminish, these birds became uneasy; evidently conscious that their day was strangely encroached upon, they were uncertain for a moment how to act. Presently, however, as the darkness increased, they started for their usual night quarters, the water-birds flying southward, the vultures in a northwesterly direction, and they had all left their feeding-grounds before the moment of greatest obscurity arrived. They seemed to fly in all haste, but were not half-way to their night home when the light began to return with rapidly increasing brightness. Their confusion was now at its height. Some continued their flight towards the mountains or the harbor, others hurried back to the city, while others whirled about wholly uncertain what to do next. The re-establishment of the full light of noon seemed to decide them, however, upon making another day of it, and the whole crowd once more moved steadily toward the city.”