IT would appear that being in a less than 100 per cent zone, we witnessed nothing unusual in our garden. The bees flew as they would have flown on any other similar day. The loss of light was only what we would normally see on a darkish, rainly day.

My honey-bee, however, ceased to fly because of the drop in temperature, which continued for a while after the shadow had begun to clear the sun.

The birds carried on with their normal activities, the blue-tits twittered in the trees and carried on feeding. I should have known beforehand that those evening primrose buds which were due to open at sunset on the day of the eclipse, couldn't open at the earlier time of the eclipse because they obviously needed a further seven or eight hours to develop, until the time when they were to open.

It would seem that nothing unusual happened in our eclipse zone, because the loss of light was not great enough. Having seen the 1927 total eclipse, I was a little disappointed with this one.

ALBERT J MORRIS, Clement View, Nelson.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.