1842 July 8. | 1850 Aug. 7. 1860 " 18. | 1868 " 17. 1878 " 29. | 1886 " 29. 1896 Aug. 9. | 1904 Sept. 9. If the curious reader will trace, by means of the _Nautical Almanac_ (or some other Almanac which deals with eclipses in adequate detail), the geographical distribution of the foregoing eclipses on the Earth’s surface, he will see that they fulfil the statement made on p. 24 (_ante_), that a Saros eclipse when it reappears, does so in regions of the Earth averaging 120° of longitude to the W. of those in which it had, on the last preceding occasion, been seen; and also that it gradually works northwards or southwards. But a given Saros eclipse in its successive reappearances undergoes other transformations besides that of Terrestrial longitude. These are well set forth by Professor Newcomb[9]:— “Since every successive recurrence of such an eclipse throws the conjunction 28′ further toward the W. of the node, the conjunction must, in process of time, take place so far back from the node that no eclipse will occur, and the series will end. For the same reason there must be a commencement to the series, the first eclipse being E. of the node. A new eclipse thus entering will at first be a very small one, but will be larger at every recurrence in each Saros. If it is an eclipse of the Moon, it will be total from its 13th until its 36th recurrence. There will be then about 13 partial eclipses, each of which will be smaller than the last, when they will fail entirely, the conjunction taking place so far from the node that the Moon does not touch the Earth’s shadow. The whole interval of time over which a series of lunar eclipses thus extend will be about 48 periods, or 865 years. When a series of solar eclipses begins, the penumbra of the first will just graze the earth not far from one of the poles. There will then be, on the average, 11 or 12 partial eclipses of the Sun, each larger than the preceding one, occurring at regular intervals of one Saros. Then the central line, whether it be that of a total or annular eclipse, will begin to touch the Earth, and we shall have a series of 40 or 50 central eclipses. The central line will strike near one pole in the first part of the series; in the equatorial regions about the middle of the series, and will leave the Earth by the other pole at the end. Ten or twelve partial eclipses will follow, and this particular series will cease.” These facts deserve to be expanded a little.