91. 
was its brilliancy while in close proximity to the sun, that it 
attracted the attention of the public at high noon in various 
parts of North and South America both on the day of its 
perihelion, and on the day following. It was seen at 11 
o'clock on the morning of the 27th, at Conception, and 
measurements of its distance from the sun were made on the 
28th, both in Maine and in Mexico; the tail being visible 
to the length of a full degree, at 3 o’clock in the afternoon 
of that day. The attempts of astronomers to satisfy the 
observations led to results singularly diverse. Only one — 
-characteristic of the orbit seemed beyond question, — the 
extreme smallness of the perihelion distance. .The close 
resemblance of its parabolic elements to those deduced by 
Henperson for the Comet of 1668, could not fail to attract 
attention, and the elements obtained by Perrce from the 
very unsatisfactory observations of the Comet of 1689, which 
have come down to us, exhibit also a decided similarity. 
Both Carocct and CLaussEN, believing in its identity with 
both, found themselves able to satisfy the observations by 
an ellipse of seven years period. ENcxe, WaLKER, and 
ANDERSON found that the observations could be closely 
represented ‘by a hyperbolic orbit, — BoGusLawskI in 
reslau advocated a period of 147} years, — WALKER 
finally decided in favor of an ellipse of 21% years, — while 
Laverer and Mavvais in Paris, Nicotar in Mannheim, 
and others, found the probabilities strongly in favor of the 
period of 175 years, — which I cannot but believe to be the 
true one. 
This magnificent object fired the zeal of Hupparp, already 
fascinated as he was with astronomical study and imbued 
with the spirit of research. He was within five months of 
graduation at Yale, and, from that time, he looked forward 
toa thorough and decisive investigation of the path of this 
