Professor Russell, who is quoted elsewhere in this work with respect to Chinese eclipses, makes the following remarks in regard to what happens now in China when eclipses occur:—“It will be interesting here to note that, even at present, by Imperial command, special rites are performed during solar and lunar eclipses. A president from each of the six boards, with two inferior officials, dressed in their official clothes, proceed to the T’ai-Ch’ang-Ssu. When the eclipse begins they change their robes for common garments made of plain black material, and kneeling down, burn incense. The president then beats one stroke on a gong, and the ceremony is taken up by all the attendant officials.” A writer in _Chambers’s Journal_[161] in an article entitled “The Hindu view of the late Eclipse,” gives an interesting and original account of divers Hindu superstitions and ceremonies which came under his notice in connection with the total eclipse of the Sun of Aug. 18, 1868. He remarks that “European science has as yet produced but little effect upon the minds of the superstitious masses of India. Of the many millions who witnessed the eclipse of the 18th of August last there were comparatively few who did not verily believe that it was caused by the dragon Rahu in his endeavour to swallow up the Lord of Day.... The pious Hindu, before the eclipse comes on, takes a torch, and begins to search his house and carefully removes all cooked food, and all water for drinking purposes. Such food and water, by the eclipse, incur _Grahana seshah_, that is, uncleanness, and are rendered unfit for use. Some, with less scruples of conscience, declare that the food may be preserved by placing on it _dharba_ or _Kusa grass_,” and much more to the like effect is duly set out in the interesting article cited. During the total eclipse of the Sun of Aug. 7, 1869, the following incident is noted[162] to have occurred at a station on the Chilkaht river, in Alaska, North America, frequented by Indians:— “About the time the Sun was half obscured the chief Koh-Klux and all the Indians had disappeared from around the observing tent; they left off fishing on the river banks; all employments were discontinued; and every soul disappeared; nor was a sound heard throughout the village of 53 houses. The natives had been warned of what would take place, but doubted the prediction. When it did occur they looked upon me as the cause of the Sun’s being ‘very sick and going to bed.’ They were thoroughly alarmed, and overwhelmed with an undefinable dread.” A still more thrilling incident is thus recorded[163] of the eclipse of July 29, 1878, by a witness at Fort Sill, Indian Territory, U.S.:—