When during totality any of the brighter planets, such as Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, or Saturn, happen to be in the vicinity of the Sun they are generally recognised; but the stars seen are usually very few, and they are only very bright ones of the 1st or 2nd magnitudes. Perhaps an explanation of the paucity of stars noticed is to be found in the fact that the minds of observers are usually too much concentrated on the Sun and Moon for any thought to be given to other things or other parts of the sky. Perhaps this is a convenient place in which to recall the fact that there has been much controversy in the astronomical world during the last 50 years as to whether there exist any undiscovered planets revolving round the Sun within the orbit of Mercury. Whilst there is some evidence, though slight, that one or more such planets have been seen, opponents of the idea base their scepticism on the fact that with so many total eclipses as there have been since 1859 (when Lescarbault claimed to have found a planet which has been called “Vulcan”), no certain proof has been obtained of the existence of such a planet; and what better occasion for finding one (if one exists of any size) than the darkness of a total solar eclipse? At present it must be confessed that the sceptics have the best of it. THE CORONA. We have now to consider what I have already called the central feature of every total eclipse. It was long ago compared to the nimbus often placed by painters around the heads of the Virgin Mary and other saints of old; and as conveying a rough general idea the comparison may still stand. It has been suggested that not a bad idea of it may be obtained by looking at a Full Moon through a wire-gauze window-screen. The Corona comes into view a short time (usually to be measured by seconds) before the total extinction of the Sun’s rays, lasts during totality and endures for a brief interval of seconds (or it might be a minute) after the Sun has reappeared. It was long a matter of discussion whether the Corona belonged to the Sun or the Moon. In the early days of telescopic astronomy there was something to be said perhaps on both sides, but it is now a matter of absolute certainty that it belongs to the Sun, and that the Moon contributes nothing to the spectacle of a total eclipse of the Sun, except its own solid body, which blocks out the Sun’s light, and its shadow, which passes across the Earth.