looking away from the telescope, I mentally reviewed the impression its appearance had made on the imagination, in order to see whether it was a faithful picture of the object; and by looking again into the telescope I was satisfied of the similitude.

In the next place I used a deeper magnifier, and alternately viewed and remembered the appearance of the nucleus. It was fainter with this power.

The third observation was made in the same manner with a magnifier of 170. This showed the nucleus of a larger diameter, but much less bright, and not so well defined.

The next morning, having recourse to my usual experiment with a set of globules, by viewing them at a given distance with the same telescope and eye-glasses, I found that one of them, on which I fixed, gave me, as nearly as could be estimated, the same magnitude with the first eye-glass, and was proportionally magnified by the second and third, with only this difference, that the highest power showed the globule with more distinctness than it did the nucleus; and by trigonometry the angle under which I saw the globule was found to be 5′′,2744.*

It will be necessary to mention that in the calculations belonging to this comet, I have used the elements of Mr. GAUS, with a small correction of the longitude of the perihelion, which I found would answer the end of giving the observed place with sufficient accuracy from the 1st of January to the

• I prefer this method of ascertaining the small diameter of a faint object to measuring it with a micrometer, which requires light to show the wires, and a high magnifying power to give an image sufficiently large for mensuration; neither of which conditions the present comet would admit.

20th. These calculations may however be repeated, if hereafter we should obtain elements improved by additional observations, made with fixed instruments; but the result, I may venture to say, will not be materially different.

The distance of the comet from the earth, the 20th of January when its apparent diameter was determined, was 1,0867, the mean distance of the earth from the sun being 1; whence we deduce a very remarkable consequence, which is, that the real diameter of its nucleus cannot be less than 2637 miles.

The Chevelure of the Comet.

Instead of that bright appearance, which in the first comet has been considered as the head, there was about the nucleus of the second a faint whitish scattered light, which may be called its chevelure.

Jan. 1. Examining the chevelure of the comet with a 10 feet reflector, I found that it surrounded the nucleus, not in the form of a head consisting of gradually much condensed nebulosity, but had the appearance of a faint haziness, which although of some extent, was not much brighter near the nucleus than at a distance from it.

Jan. 2. I viewed the two comets alternately. The first could only be distinguished from a bright globular nebula by the scattered light of its tail, which was still 2° 20′ long. The second comet, on the contrary, had nothing in its appearance resembling such a nebula: it consisted merely of a nucleus, surrounded by a very faint chevelure; and had it not been for an extremely faint light in a direction opposite to the sun, it would hardly have been intitled to the name of a comet;

having rather the appearance of a planet seen through an atmosphere full of haziness.

Jan. 8. The chevelure consisted of so faint a light that, when magnified only 170 times, it was nearly lost.

Jan. 18. The chevelure was extremely faint and of very little extent.

Jan. 20. The light of the moon, which was up, would not admit of further accurate observations on the chevelure.

The Tail of the Comet.

Jan. 1. With a low magnifying power, I saw in the 10 feet reflector an extremely faint scattered light, in opposition to the sun, forming the tail of the comet. It reached from the centre of the double eye-glass half way toward the circumference.

Jan. 8. The narrow, very faint scattered light beyond the chevelure remains extended in the direction opposite the sun.

Jan. 18. I estimated the length of the tail by the proportion it bore to the diameter of the field of the eye-glass, which takes in 38′ 39′′, and found that it filled about one quarter of it, which gives 9′ 40′′.

Jan. 20. On account of moonlight the tail was no longer visible.

From the angle which it subtended in the last observation, it will be found that its length must have been about 659 thousand miles.

Remarks on the Construction of the Comet.

The method I have taken in my last paper of comparing together the phenomena of different comets appears to me

most likely to throw some light upon a subject which still remains involved in great obscurity. When the comet of which the observations have been given in this paper is compared with the preceding one, it will be found to be extremely different. Its physical construction appears indeed to approach nearly to a planetary condition. In its magnitude it bears a considerable proportion to the size of the planets; the diameter of its nucleus being very nearly one-third of that of the earth.

The light by which we see it is probably also planetary; that is to say reflected from the sun. For were it of a phosphoric, self-luminous nature, we could hardly account for its little density for instance, the very small body of the first comet, at the distance of 114 millions of miles from the earth bore a magnifying power of 600, and was even seen better with this than with a lower one ;* whereas the second, notwithstanding its large size, and being only at the distance of 103 millions, had not light enough to bear conveniently to be magnified 107 times; but if we admit this nucleus to be opaque, like the bodies of the planets, and of a nature not to reflect much light, then its distance from the sun, which the 20th of January was above 174 millions of miles, will explain the cause of its feeble illumination.

That the nucleus of this comet was surrounded by an atmosphere appears from its chevelure, which, though faint, was of considerable extent; and the elasticity of this atmosphere may be inferred from the spherical figure of the chevelure, proved by its roundness and equal decrease of light at equal distances from the centre.

See Observations of the First Comet.

The transparency of the atmosphere is partly ascertained from our seeing the nucleus through it, but may also be inferred by analogy from an observation of the first comet. It will be remembered that an atmosphere of great transparency, which had been seen for a long time, was lost when the comet receded from the sun, by the subsidence of some nebulous matter not sufficiently rarified to enter the regions of the tail.* Now as the existence of this atmosphere, when it was no longer visible, might have been doubted, the luminous matter suspended in it, which had already 20 days obstructed our view of it, happened fortunately to be once more elevated the 9th of December, and thereby enabled us, from its transparency and capacity of sustaining luminous vapours, to ascertain the continuance of its existence. By analogy, therefore, we may surmise that the faint chevelure of the second comet consists also of the condensation of some remaining phosphoric matter, suspended in the lower regions, of an elastic, transparent fluid, extending probably far beyond the chevelure without our being able to perceive it.

We might ascribe the little extent and extreme faintness of the tail to the great perihelion distance of the comet, if it had not already been proved, by the comparative view which in my last paper has been taken of the two comets of 1807 and 1811, that the effect of the solar agency depends entirely upon the state of the nebulous matter, which the comet in its ap proach exposes to the action of the sun. therefore had probably but little unperihelioned matter in its atmosphere.

Our last comet

The high consolidation of the matter contained in the second

⚫ See Observations of the First Comet,