said that the next pair (they always occur in pairs like twins) will be in 2004 and 2012, and the last pair were in 1874 and 1882. The pair before that were in 1761 and 1769, and one of the people who observed the Transit of 1769 was the famous Captain Cook, who was killed by the natives of the island of Hawaii ten years afterwards. A more famous Transit still was that of 1639, because it was the first that any one ever observed. It occurred to a young clergyman named Horrox that there might be such a thing, though no one had thought of it before; and he calculated the day on which it would fall, which turned out to be Sunday. He got out his telescope at sunrise, and set it to look at the sun; for he did not quite know at what time the Transit would come. The hours passed on, and it began to get near church time. Then came rather a struggle between duty and inclination. What was he to do? Transits of Venus do not come every Sunday. Was he to go to church and take the service, or to watch Venus? Well, really he had no doubt what he should do. He lived long before Nelson, but he knew what "England expects of every man." So he went to his duty first, and took the service. Should you think that he thought of Venus sometimes? At any rate, when it was over, he flung off his surplice, and hurried back to his study, and, to his great delight, he saw Venus just coming on to the Sun. So Horrox and his friend, Crabtree, a weaver, whom he had told of the great event, were the first to see a Transit of Venus. Horrox was quite a young fellow, and I am sorry to say that he died at the age of only 24. He had done so much before 24 that some people think that
