The separation of the discs of the sun and moon during the following hour was probably carefully observed by few except the astronomers and photographers; the moment of interest had passed, and few cared to do more than exchange congratulations on the success of the display. I forgot to notice whether the corona and prominences were visible after the totality; the latter were still seen, according to accounts received from elsewhere, and I met with one gentleman some days afterward who had seen the great protuberance on the lower edge of the sun at Shelbyville, Indiana, a point some fifteen miles from the outside line of totality; he had, of course, no previous suspicion of its existence.
The eclipse was naturally the principal topic of conversation during the evening, and every one was anxious to report his own observations and learn those of others. I found that eleven spectral lines had been seen by Professor Winlock in the great prominence, some of them characteristic of the metal magnesium. He saw only three before and after totality; thus confirming the idea previously entertained, that solar eclipses, though not the only occasions on which these interesting objects may be seen, are, with our present apparatus, far the best. The photographers had taken some eighty pictures, several during the totality, and the times of beginning and ending had been accurately observed both at Shelbyville and, as we afterward learned, also at the stations on the border line, Falmouth and Oakland; which border observations give the position and breadth of the path of the shadow within some eight or ten rods; the southern edge can even be determined with much greater accuracy, owing to a fortunate selection of the station, which proved to be extremely near it. The precise amounts by which these results differ from the previous computations have yet to be determined; but it is probable that the corrections to the tables now used will be very small.
An ingenious method of observing the time of the external contacts, or beginning and end of the whole eclipse, was, as I heard, devised by a gentleman at another station. These phenomena, especially the first, are very difficult to observe accurately, owing to the invisibility of the moon when off of the sun's disc, and the waviness of the sun's limb, making it doubtful that an indentation has been made in it till it has become quite deep, which is, of course, some time after the actual meeting of the two bodies. He observed it with the spectroscope by noting the time of disappearance of one of the lines only visible on the extreme edge of the sun's disc.