Animals Acted Queerly During Eclipse a Century Ago, Old Report Shows--"Gentlemen of Boston" Investigate

Peculiar behavior, by cows, horses, dogs, cats, and even fish, will be one of the features of today's total eclipse of the sun, if the animals of today act like those of 100 years ago.

In a description of the Total Eclipse of the Sun around Boston on June 16, 1806, the Monthly Anthology bears the following report of a committee of Boston men, headed by Benjamin Bussey of the class of 1803, founder of the Bussey Institute at the University, who had been instructed to make observations on the behavior of the sun during the eclipse:

"The committee, in pursuance of their commission, proceed to report some particulars that escaped their personal observation. The cows on the common, we are told, discovered sensible marks of agitation. Some of them left the ground and proceeded homeward, the rest gathered around a person, who was crossing the common at the time, and followed him with apparent anxiety, as if soliciting protection."

Further on the report states, in referring to the eclipse of 1715, that "Dr. Halley, intimates some appearance of alarm among the fish" during that eclipse, but the committee declares that "we have not heard any similar remark at this time."

A full copy of the report of the committee which was reprinted from the Monthly Anthology in the Hudson, New York, "Balance and Columbian Repository", on Tuesday, August 5, 1806, is now on exhibition in the Widener Room at the University Library. An original copy of the "Balance" for that date was forwarded early this week to Professor G. P. Winship '93 by C. H. Taylor '89 of Boston, as a gift to the University Library.

The committee which reported on the eclipse consisted of "a number of gentlemen in Boston, who had furnished themselves with proper instruments, and agreed to meet on the morning of the 16th at the house of Mr. Benjamin Bussey, in Summer Street, for the purpose of observing the eclipse."