i8 



NATURE 



[May 6, i8So 



Laut, two Prince Albert's Curassows (CVi7.tr nlbcrti) from 

 Columbia, purchased ; two Common Foxes {Cam's vulfcs), four 

 Chilian Pintails {Dafila spinicaicda), bred in the Gardens. 



OUR ASTRONOMICAL COLUMN 

 The Comet of iio6. — Amongst the comets which were 

 thought to present certain indications of identity with the great 

 comet of 1843 was that recorded by a large number of European 

 historians, as well as in the Chinese AnnaU, in the year 1106. 

 The circnmstances of its appearance may be thus briefly stated : 

 On the 4th of February, or, according to others, on the 5th, a 

 star was seen which was distant from the sun " only a fojt and 

 a half " ; it was observed from the third to the ninth hour of the 

 day. Matthew Paris and Matthew of Westminster distinctly 

 term it a comet. Pingre, not having the experience of the comet 

 of 1S43 ^5 a precedent, questioned the possibility of seeing one 

 of these bodies at so small a distance from the sun as the above 

 expression may be taken to imply. Now, however, we are able 

 to connect, with much probability, the star viewed in the day-time 

 with the comet which on February 7 was di-covered in Palestine 

 about the commencement of the sign Pisces. On this day, we 

 are told by three contemporary writers, a comet appeared in that 

 quarter of the sky where the sun sets in winter, and occa-ioned 

 great surprise ; a white ray extended from it to a great distance. 

 From the time of its first appearance "the comet itself and the 

 ray, which had the whiteness of snow, diminished day by day." 

 Others, on the contrary, say that the train, which had a more 

 than milky whiteness, appeared to increase daily. In the west 

 of Europe it does not seem to have been remarked till February 

 16 or 18. According to some writers it was visible only a fort- 

 night, others say that it continued to shine for forty days, or 

 during the whole of Lent, from February 7 to March 25 ; an 

 eye-witness records that after fifty days the most acute vision 

 only sufficed to distinguish it with difficulty. There is similar 

 contradiction respecting the aspect of the comet, though most of 

 the historians testify to its great brightness and apparent magni- 

 tude. On February 10, according to Gaubil's manuscript, used 

 by Pingre for his " Cometographie," it was near the end of the 

 sign Pisces, with a tail 60° in length. European chronicles 

 mention that the tail extended to the beginning of the sign 

 Gemini, under the constellation of Orion, whence, as Pingre 

 points out, the latitude of the comet must have been suuth, while 

 as the sun was in 25' of Aquariu-, it could hardly be less 

 advanced than 10° or 12° of Pisces to be seen in the evening 

 after sunset. Thence, about February 16 or iS, it moved to the 

 western quarter of the heavens, and after many days had elapsed, 

 as Pingre records : " La comete parut du cote du septentrion vers 

 I'occident : sa queue, semblable a une grand poutre, regardoit la 

 partie du ciel qui est entre le septentrion et I'orient ; on la voyoit 

 jusque vers le milieu de la unit. Durant vingt-cinq jours elle 

 brilloit de la meme maniore a la memeheure." Williams, in 

 his account of comets mentioned in the Chinese annals, has a 

 notice of the one in question. In the reign of Hwuy Tsung, 

 the 5th year of the epoch Tsung Ning, the 1st moon, day Woo 

 Seuh (1106, Febrmry 10), a comet appeared in the west. It 

 was like a great Pei Kow (a kind of vessel or measure). It 

 appeared like a broken-up star. It w as 60 cubits in length and 

 3 cubits in breadth. Its direction was to the north-east : it 

 passed the sidereal division Kwei (determined by /3, 5, € Andro- 

 meda; and stars in Pisces), and through the divisions Lew 

 (determined by a, /3, 7 Arietis), Wei (by the three stars of 

 Musca), Maou (by the Pleiade.-), and Peih (by a, 7, 5, &c., 

 Tauri). It then entered the clouds and was no more seen. 

 Williams, doubtless influenced by this last expression, and the 

 object having been said to resemble a broken-up star, and 

 probably overlooking the presence of the comet recorded by the 

 European hi-torians in the same part of the sky, adds: "This 

 appears to have been a large meteor, as it seems to have been 

 seen for a short time only. " But there can be little hesitation, we 

 think, in identifying the body remarked in China with the 

 European comet, its track through the constellations, as given by 

 AVilliams, which agrees with Gaubil's manuscript, representing 

 very satisfactorily the particulars found in the European 

 chronicles. 



In 1843 Laugier and Mauvais, reducing their elements of the 

 gi-eat comet of that year to 1 106, and assuming the perihelion 

 passage to have taken place on February 3, found the following 

 geocentric track. 



And they conclude, "en admettant que la comete de U06 e't 

 une apparition de la comete de 1843, toutes les observations 

 sont satisfaites." It is not easy to see how such an inference 

 can have been drawn in face of the circumstances mentioned by 

 the historians during the later period of the comet's visibility, 

 when it was seen to the north of west, with a tail extending 

 towards the north-cast ; a condition wholly incompatible with 

 the elements of the comet of 1843, which body did not remain 

 on the northern side of the ecliptic so long as three hours. On 

 reducing Hubbard's parabola of 1843 to 1106 we have the 

 following positions, assuming perihelion passage February 3'5 

 G.M.T. :— 



G.M.T, 

 Feb 



Long. 



Lat. 



Log. 



Log. .i. Intensity 

 h. , , of Light. 



4, o ... 322-9 ... - 1-7 ... 8S0S0 ... 9'9704 ... 277-6 

 19, % ... 12-6 ... -25-1 ... 9-8377 ... 9-9543 ... 2-6- 

 March 25, 12 ... 60-3 ... -27-3 ... 0-1725 ... 0-2619 ... 0-13 



These places are in agreement with those found by Laugier 

 and Mauvais; that for March 25 corresponds to R.A, 63°'7, 

 Decl. -6° -4. 



It is well known that the comet of 1 106, with better reason, 

 w.as long supposed to be identical with the famous comet of 

 16S0. That point has been discussed elsewhere. Our object 

 now, since the possibility of the identity of the comet of llo5 

 with that of 18S0 and 1843 has been again mooted, is to draw 

 attention to the main difficulty that exists in the acceptance of 

 the idea. 



PHYSICAL NOTES 



M. Antoihe Breguet, at a lecture upon Recent Advances in 

 Telegraphy, exhibited some ingenious apparatus illustrating the 

 principles of the duplex and quadruples telegraph, the actions 

 of the electric currents being most successfully represented by 

 the flow of water in tube-. 



Prof. Carjiichael describes, in the American jfournal oj 

 Science^ a device for rendering the sonorous vibrations of a flame 

 visible to a whole audience. He passes coal-gas through a 

 Konig's manometric capsule, and then leads it by a tube into a 

 burner inclosed in a small mica cylinder or lantern, which is 

 rotated either in a vertical or a horizontal plane. The ring of 

 light thus produced is broken up by the sonorous vibrations into 

 a serrated form, the forms of the serrations varying with the 

 nature of the sound. To increase the brilliance of the light the 

 gas is previously passed over a sponge soaked in some volatile 

 hydrocarbon such as "gasoline" or " benzoline," and oxygen is 

 also supplied into the mica lantern. A shrill whistle pi odnces 

 very fine serrations invisible thirty feet away. The human voice 

 at ordinary loudness produces serrations two or three inches 

 deep round the ring. A modified capsule placed upon the 

 various parts of a vibrating bDdy serves to investigate their 

 modes of vibration, nodal points, &c. 



.Some curious experiments on the magnetic behaviour of elder- 

 pith have lately been made by M. Ader. Pith-balls placed in a 

 powerful magnetic field are strongly attracted. 



Prof. Rowland contributes a long and careful memoir upon 

 thermo.netry and the mechanical equivalent of heat to the 

 Transactions of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. 

 His results differ by about -25 per cent, from the accepted 

 numerical determinations of Joule's equivalent. Amongst other 

 matters noticed in this memoir is an alleged decrease in the 

 specific heat of water at higher temperatures. 



A CONTEMPORARY gives the following method of illustrating 

 the indestructibility of matter : — Two sealed glass tubes of equal 

 weight, one of them containing oxygen and a little powdered 

 charcoal, are prepared. The charcoal may be caused to burn 

 away completely by heating it by means of a small flame. On 

 placing the two tubes on a balance it will be seen that there has 

 been no variation in weight. 



The process of electrodeposition is now finding a useful appli- 

 cation in the production of bronze statuary, ^^here it promises to 

 supersede the process of casting. The Electrometallurgical 

 Company of Brussels have just produced a colossal statue of Van 



