64 Imperial Institute of France. 



what can be the cause of it ? To these questions geonie- 

 tricians and astronomers will make no answers, because 

 thev do not know anv good ones, and because they neither 

 desire to give or to receive any other kind. In the absence 

 of these solutions so desirable, recourse was had to the 

 foreign Journals for the calculations which were repre- 

 sented as curious observations. They gravely informed us 

 how many miles the comet travelled in a given lime — vain 

 inquiry ! — which an astronomer is sometimes teased into, 

 but to which he can never attach any real imp(}rtance. The 

 comet, at the time of its greatest rapidity of motion, never 

 equalled that of Venus, far less that of Mercury. We see 

 Venus almost at all seasons; she approaches the Earth 

 much more closely than any comet; no person ever asks 

 hovv many leagues she travels daily ; and no person even 

 took it into his head that she would fall upon the Earth. 

 It must be confessed, however, to the glory of the present 

 age, that these terrors are -greatly diminished, and men of 

 strong minds have testified their displeasure at them. 



The second comet was discovered at Marseilles, on the 

 16th of November, by M. Pons, who had formerly been 

 the discoverer of seven or eight others. The director of 

 the Imperial Observatory of that city, M. Blanpain, com- 

 municated the discovery to us, at the same tinie transmit- 

 ting the observations which he had made on the 17th, I8tb, 

 and 19th of the same month. Its movement was daily about 

 10' right ascension, against the order of the signs, and 33' 

 declination towards the north pole. It was then very feeble, 

 and very difficult to see at Paris : the bad weather also 

 frustrated the attempts of our astronomers, and they ex- 

 perienced many obstacles in making some doubtful obser- 

 vations. M. Burckhardt however calculated the orbit ; and 

 although he considered it only as an awkward attempt, it 

 was found almost entirely similar to that which M. Gauss 

 determined from observations perhaps a little belter, be- 

 cause they were made in a climate more to the southward. 

 However this may be, the comet has already passed its peri- 

 helion, and will soon disappear; its smallest distance from the 

 Sun was as 8 to 5 of the distance from the Earth to theSun. 

 In spite of this distance, which accounted for its didlness 

 and the slowness of its movement, if the weather had been 

 more favourable, it would have been easier to have ob- 

 served it than the beautiful comet which we still see, be- 

 cause its nucleus was more apparent and- better defined. 

 We know that it does not resemble any of the 100 comets 

 whose orbits are known. 



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