ON COMETS. 131 



with low magnifying powers of an envelope surrounding 

 a nucleus in the general way above described, but the 

 connexion was singularly varied, as if several jets of 

 luminous (or illuminated) matter had been issuing from 

 various parts of the nucleus, giving rise, by their more or 

 less oblique presentation to the eye, to exceedingly 

 varied appearances sometimes like the spokes of a 

 wheel or the radial sticks of a fan, sometimes blotted 

 by patches of irregular light, and sometimes interrupted 

 by equally irregular blots of darkness. From the 24th 

 September to the loth October, however, there were 

 seen to form no less than three distinct caps or envelopes 

 in front of the nucleus, each separated from that below 

 it by a more or less distinct comparatively dark inter- 

 val. These Professor Bond appears to consider as hav- 

 ing been thrown off in intermittent succession, as if the 

 forces of ejection had been temporarily exhausted, and 

 again and again resumed a phase of activity; the peculiar 

 action by which the matter of the envelopes was ulti- 

 mately driven into the tail (or, as we conceive i*- an 

 analysis of that matter performed by solar action, the 

 levitating portion of it being hurried off the gravitating 

 remaining behind in the form of a transparent, gaseous, 

 non-reflective medium), taking place, not on the surface 

 of the nucleus, but at successively higher levels. Mean- 

 while, and especially from the 7th to the loth of October, 

 that is to say, when the full effect of the perihelion action 

 had been endured, the nucleus and its adjacent sector 

 offered every appearance of most violent, and, so to 

 speak, angry excitement, evidenced by the complicated 



