There is so much to be seen during the few seconds of total obscuration that no one human being, however well trained in the art of observing, could possibly see all. Therefore it is necessary to pre-arrange each observer’s part, to have careful rehearsals of what is to be done by each during the precious seconds; and each man must exercise a vast amount of self-control in order to confine his attention to his own particular bit of observation, while he is surrounded with such marvellous phenomena as a total eclipse presents. The grandeur of the gloomy landscape, the sudden starting out of the greater stars, the seeming falling of the vault of heaven, the silence of the animal world, the closing of the flowers, and all that the ordinary observer would regard with so much awe and wondering delight, must be sacrificed by the philosopher, whose business is to confine his gaze to a narrow slit between two strips of metal, and to watch nothing else but the exact position and appearance of a few bright or dark lines across what appears but a strip of colored riband. He must resist the temptation to look aside and around with the stubbornness of self-denial of another St. Antonio. Besides this, he must thoroughly understand exactly what to look for, and how to find it. By combining the results of his observations with those of the others, who in like manner have undertaken to work with another instrument, or upon another part of the phenomena, we get a scientific result comparable to that which in a manufactory we obtain by the division of labor of many skilled workmen, each doing only that which by his training he has learned to do the best and the most expeditiously. FURTHER DETAILS BY POST. Although the formal official reports of the Eclipse Expedition are not yet published, and may not be for some weeks or months, we are able from the letters of Lockyer, Jannsen, Respighi, Maclear, etc., to form some idea of the general results. We may already regard two or three important questions as fairly answered. The reversal of the dark solar lines of the spectrum which was first announced by the great Roman observer, Father Secchi, and seen by him without an eclipse, may now be considered as established. It is true that all the observers of 1871 did not witness this. Some were doubtful, but others observed it positively and distinctly. In such a case negative results do not refute the positive observations of qualified men, especially when several of such observations have been made independently; the phenomenon is but instantaneous, a mere flash of bright stripes in place of dark lines across the colored riband of the spectroscope, which happens just at the moment before and after totality, and is presented only when the instrument is accurately directed to the delicate curved vanishing thread of light which is the last visible fragment of the solar outline, and that which makes the first flash of his re-appearance.