SOLAR AND LUNAR ECLIPSES FAMILIARLY ILLUSTRATED AND EXPLAINED, METHOD OF CALCULATING THEM ACCORDING TO THE THEORY OF ASTRONOMY, as TAUGHT NEW ENGLAND COLLEGES. Ke x02 BY JAMES H. COFFIN, A.M. .C NEW YORK: COLLINS, BROTHER & CO, 1845.EE Fs Vosty. /GoY. ¥s~ 167 = Sypk q Fev Sunol, 1 Sas Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1845, BY JAMES H. COFFIN, In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of Connecticut. MICROFILMEDPREFACE, ‘Tur design of this treatise, is to explain the “rationale” of some of the most interesting astronomical calculations, in such a way that the student may clearly see the reason of every step, and its connection with the theory. In this respect it differs from many others, which give the rules for calculating merely, wjthout any explanation of the reason of them. Being partly designed as a text book for colleges, the author has endeavoured to adapt it to the design of college education, which is not so much to make adept practitioners in any particular science, as to give broad and com- prehensive views of the whole field. Hence, the principles of the several sciences should be thoroughly understood by the student ; “but the application of them to practice by mere rules is foreign to the design of a collegiate course of study. If, therefore, the calcu- lations of astronomy are attended to at all in college, it should be in such a way, that the connection with the theory may be appa- rent, and that the two may mutually illustrate each other. In many of treatises for colleges, this point seems to be overlooked. Some of them contain tables for astronomical calculations which are very minute and accurate, and at the same time, so constructed and arranged as to reduce the labour of calculation as much as possible ; but the student can see no connection between them and the motions and perturbations which occupy his attention in the study of the theory. In fact, one who has studied the theory with ever so much thoroughness, has here very little advantage over one who is entirely ignorant of it; each being guided wholly by rules that must appear entirely arbitrary. Such tables not being adapted to the design of this treatise, the author found it necessary to prepare a set differing somewhat in