With the disappearance of the last ray of light, the planets and the stars of the first and second magnitude seem to light up and become visible in the sky. The darkness, which had been gradually creeping in with the progress of the eclipse, is then at its maximum. Although subject to great variations in different eclipses, the darkness is never so great as might be expected from the complete obscuration of our luminary, as the part of our atmosphere which is still exposed to the direct rays of the Sun, reflects to us some of that light, which thus diminishes the darkness resulting from the disappearance of the Sun. Usually the darkness is sufficient to prevent the reading of common print, and to deceive animals, causing them to act as if night was really approaching. During totality the temperature decreases, while the humidity of the atmosphere augments. Simultaneously with the disappearance of Baily's beads, a pale, soft, silvery light bursts forth from behind the Moon, as if the Sun, in disappearing, had been vaporized and expanded in all directions into soft phosphorescent rays and streamers. This pale light is emitted by gases constituting the solar atmosphere surrounding the bright nucleus now obscured by the dark body of our satellite. This solar atmosphere is called _Corona_, from its distant resemblance to the aureola, or glory, represented by ancient painters around the heads of saints. With the bursting forth of the corona, a very thin arc of bright white light is seen along the Moon's limb, where the solar crescent has just disappeared. This thin arc of light is the reversing layer, which, when observed with the spectroscope at that moment, exhibits bright lines answering to the dark lines of the ordinary solar spectrum. Immediately above this reversing layer, and concentric with it, appears the pink-colored chromospheric layer, with its curiously shaped flames and protuberances. During totality, the chromosphere and protuberances are seen without the aid of the spectroscope, and appear of their natural color, which, although somewhat varying in their different parts, is, on the whole, pinkish, and similar to that of peach-blossoms; yet it is mixed here and there with delicate prismatic hues, among which the pink and straw colors predominate. The color of the corona seems to vary in every eclipse, but as its tints are very delicate, it may depend, in a great measure, upon the vision of the observer; although there seems to be no doubt that there are real variations. At Creston, in 1878, it appeared to both Professor W. Harkness and myself of a decided pale greenish hue.