Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 65.djvu/112

pable management and all wrong. Every piece of apparatus should be set up, adjusted, tested and used at the home station; and time should be available thereafter for making modifications in apparatus, methods and program, and for retrial. With every possible preparation made before leaving home, the astronomer will find his time occupied at the eclipse station in solving the ninety and nine local problems whose coming is sure, but whose nature can not be foreseen. To install half a dozen instruments in a fixed observatory so that they will work satisfactorily, one at a time, and at the observer's leisure, is not a small problem. To construct a temporary observatory in an out of the way corner of the earth, to mount the eight or ten instruments, and to train the dozen or more assistants so that all the instruments and all the men will work together satisfactorily at the fixed instant of totality, is a problem of a very different order. The point which I wish to emphasize is that preparations for observing the eclipse of August, 1905, should begin early in 1904.