The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1874-12-12 00:00:00

THE TRANSIT OF VENUS.
(From The Times, Wednesday, Dec. 9.)

At about a quarter to two this morning the planet
Venus began her passage across the disc of the sun
—an event for which astronomers of all countries
have for years past been anxiously waiting and
carefully preparing. By halfspast six the Transit
of Venus of 1874 was a thing of the past. At
the commencement of this morning's Transit the
sun marked noon and was overhead near the Eastern
Coast of Australia; at the end, the sun was vettical
over the middle region of the Indian Ocean;
during no part of the Transit, therefore, was Europe
or America on the side of the earth turned towards the
sun. The inhabitants of the mist civilized countries
of the world, therefore, less fortunate than their fore-
fathers in the last century, have not been privileged
to get even a glimpse—such as liorrox and Crabtree,
and they alone, obtained in 1639—0 f one of the rarest
of natural phenomena.
We took occasion, when the carefully-equipped Ex-
peditions which England was sending to various parts
of the world were leaving us, to call attention to the
astronomical side of the problem, and we dealt with it
so fully that there is no necessity to refer to it now;
but the astronomer's point of view is by no means the
only one of general interest connected with the recent
Transit. We have, first of all, the remarkable spec.
tacle of trained observers of almost all nationalities—
observers sent out by England, the United States,
France, Germany, Italy, and Holland—distributed
among some seventy stations, some of them the most
inhospitable islands of the Southern seas, engagedsupon
one of the most abstract inquiries which can be imagined.
The anxiety of the various European and the
American Goveniments to contribute towards the
solution of the problem can, perhaps, best be shown
by indicating the stations occupied this morning by
the various parties. The English flag floats over the
observatories of three parties in :he Sandwich Islands,
two parties in Kerguelen's Land, one in Rodriguez,
one in New Zealand, two in Egypt, and one in
India ; nor must we omit to mention Lord Lind-
say's station in the Mauritius, though his is a
private Expedition. This is a goodly list, but
it is surpassed in its area of distribution by the
American Expeditions, which occupy Vladivostok
in Siberia, Tien-tsin, a station in Japan, and
in the Southern seas K erguelen's Land, the
Crozets, Hobart Town, Bluff Harbour (New Zealand),
and Chatham Island. France has seven stations— '
Campbell and St. Paul's Islands, Noumea. Pekin,
Yokohama, and Saigon. Russia does not occupy any
Southern stations but she makes up for this by ob-
serving at no less than thirty stations within her own
territory. The German Government has equipped five
Southern parties, while Holland is represented at
Rdunion. Italy has a party in Egypt. She was to
have been represented by four parties in all; but little
is known of her arrangements.
The number of observed Transits has been BO few
ttint it is an easy task to contrast the present arrange-
ments with what was done in former times. Horrox,
one of the most gifted of English men of science—
whose memory, we rejoice to know, will this year be
appropriately, if tardily, perpetuated by a tablet in
Westminster Abbey—piedicted the Transit in 1639 so
shortly before he observed it that there was no time,
if. indeed, there had been any desire, to send observers
from England. When the next Transits occurred in
the following century, in the years 1761 and 1769,
the Expeditions were few. In the former year
r we had an English Expedition to Sumatra and a
Frenth one to Pdtitlieharry, neither a which reached