In spite of the unattractive, not to say forbidding, character of the place to which they would have to go, parties of astronomers went out from England, France, Austria, and Italy, and although rain fell on the morning of the day the sky became quite clear by the time of totality and the observations were completely successful. One of the pictures of the Corona obtained by Trouvelot, an observer of French descent, but belonging to the American party, has been often reproduced in books and exhibited the Corona in a striking form. How few were the attractions of Caroline Island as an eclipse station may be judged from the fact that the inhabitants consisted of only four native men, one woman, and two children who lived in three houses and two sheds. On September 8, 1885, there occurred a total eclipse, which was seen as such in New Zealand, but the observations were few, and with one exception, unimportant and uninteresting. A certain Mr. Graydon, however, made a sketch which showed at one point a complete break in the Corona so that from the very edge of the Moon outwards into space, there was a long and narrow black space showing nothing but a vacuity. If this was really the condition of things, such a break in the Corona is apparently quite unprecedented. In 1886, on August 29, there occurred a total eclipse, visible in the West Indies, which yielded various important results. It was unfortunate that for the greater part of its length, the zone of totality covered ocean and not land, the only land being the Island of Grenada and some adjacent parts of South America. The resulting restriction as regards choice of observing stations was the more to be regretted because the duration of the totality was so unusually long, and therefore favourable, being more than 6½ minutes in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Parties of English, American, and Italian astronomers assembled, however, at Grenada, and though the weather was not the best possible, some interesting photographs were obtained which exhibited an unusual development of hydrogen protuberances. The central line in this eclipse not only stretched right across the Atlantic, but entered Africa on the West Coast where a missionary saw the eclipse as a mere spectator, and afterwards expressed his regret that no astronomers were within reach with instruments to record the remarkable Corona which was displayed to his gaze.