Another question which has engaged my attention is that concerning the lunar eclipses which Bering or his party is said to have observed in the winter 1728-'9. Dall says: "In none of the published reports of the expedition is any mention made by Bering or his officers of the occurrence or observation of an eclipse.... However, Middendorf states (Sib. Reise, iv. I, p. 56) that Bering and his lieutenants in the years 1728 and 1729 observed in Kamtschatka two eclipses of the moon, by which they corrected the longitude. He gives," says Dall, "no authority for this statement, and it is probable that an eclipse observed at Ilimsk, in middle Siberia, by Chirikoff is thus erroneously referred {220} to." Mr. Marcus Baker, in a paper appended to Dall's account, makes it evident that such eclipses, if any, were those of February 25 (local calendar), 1728, or February 24, 1729. My own investigations confirm the statements of Middendorf, and in support of this I refer to de l'Isle and to the author of the "Letter." In this connection, however, we have the clear and definite statements of de l'Isle, both in his essays of 1738 at St. Petersburg and his memoir of 1752 at Paris. These statements are fully confirmed by the evidence of the Russian marine officer, who certainly served with Bering in his later expeditions if not in the first, and whose familiarity with all the records and papers should have enabled him definitely to contradict de l'Isle on the main question instead of correcting him in details. In his St. Petersburg memoirs of 1738 (page 10) de l'Isle writes: "On verra a cette occasion la situation du Kamtchatka de terminée par deux eclipses de Lune, que M. le Capitaine Bering & ses gens y sont observées dans leur premier voyage [the expedition 1725-'30], & dont j'ai rendu compte a l'Academie aussi-tot que ces observations m'ont ete communiquées." In the paper of Paris, 1752 ("Nouvelles découvertes au Nord de la Mer du Sud") de l'Isle says on this point: "Captain Beering and his lieutenant likewise took observations at Kamschatka of two eclipses of the moon in the years 1728 and 1729, which helped me to chart the longitude of that eastern extremity of Asia with all the precision which the nature of these observations, made by seamen and with their own instruments, would admit of; but these first determinations have been since confirmed by observations on Jupiter's satellites, taken in that place with the utmost accuracy by my brother and some Russians conversant in this kind of observations and who were provided with the best of instruments."