April 29, 1880] 



NATURE 



619 



comet at 1 1 a.m. at Conception on February 27, much further 

 distant ; according to Hubbard's parabolic orbit, the comet was 

 then i° 55' from the sun's limb, and its hourly motion at the 

 time was — I5'"4 in right ascension and + 4 <- 5 in declination ; 

 Prof. Peirce remarked, " the Conception observation, if it was 

 made with anything of the accuracy which might be expected 

 from Capt. Ray, exhibits a decided anomaly in the nature of the 

 forces to which the comet was subjected during its perihelion 

 passage," and it is only in this connection that the observation 

 requires to be noted ; there still remains the difficulty of explain- 

 ing how Capt. Ray's attention could have been called to an 

 object distant only 5' from the sun's limb. 



On February 28 the head, with a tail several degrees in length, 

 was observed at noonday in various parts of Italy, off the Cape 

 of Good Hope, and at different points in the United States, and 

 in Mexico. Bianchi, writing from Modena, states that on this day, 

 the sky having been perfectly clear up to noon, great numbers of 

 persons at Bologna, Parma, at the Villa de Colorno, and at Genoa, 

 from 10h.45m.to iih. 45m., saw "akind of star, "a little distance 

 from the sun to the east, which shone very vividly — "malgre la 

 proximite apparente du soleil dont il fallait seulement se mettre a 

 l'abris de la vue directe par l'interposition d'une mureille " — from 

 which a bright tail extended towards the east for four or five 

 degrees. The passengers and others on board a vessel, then off 

 the Cape of Good Hope, remarked the comet distinctly about 

 the same hours, and rather later, as we have mentioned, it was 

 discovered at different places in the United States. The only 

 observations of position made there which have any pretensions 

 to accuracy were obtained by Mr. Clarke of Portland, Maine, 

 who measured the distance of the nucleus from the sun's limb 

 soon after 3 p.m. Mr. Bowring, at Chihuahua in Mexico, took 

 with a sextant double-altitudes of comet and sun on the same 

 afternoon. Unfortunately, notwithstanding the comet was so 

 widely observed in Italy, its place was nowhere accurately fixed, 

 but motion was detected, as appears from a letter of Amici to 

 Arago, communicated by the latter to the Paris Academy. Amici 

 wrote that his son, traversing the Place Calderini at Bologna, 

 remarked a group of persons whose attention was directed to a 

 comet. He saw it as a luminous mas*, distant from the sun 

 eastward more than two solar diameters. When viewed with 

 an opera-glass it resembled a small flame, with ill-defined 

 contours, three times as long as broad, very luminous on the side 

 next the sun, and a little smoky to the east. At I p.m. its posi- 

 tion was south of the sun's lower limb; "at 3 p.m. its motion 

 towards the east had already produced a decided displacement." 



The tail was remarked on the evening of March I in southern 

 latitudes, and on March 5 precise observations of the nucleus 

 were commenced after sunset at the Royal Observatory, Cape of 

 Good Hope ; the nucleus had been seen at Buenos Ayres two 

 days earlier. The tail was detected at Lisbon on March 8, and 

 the nucleus on March 12. At Montpellier M. Legrand saw the 

 comet on March 11 at 7h. 15m., and described its light as of a 

 "couleur rouge, tres-prononcee ; " this redness, he states, was 

 equally noticeable on March 13, but on the following evening 

 the train was white. The ruddy colour was disputed by other 

 observers. 



In those pre- telegraphic days we were without intimation of 

 the comet's appearance before March 17, on the evening of 

 which day in this country, as in most parts of Europe, the tail 

 attracted general attention. It was considered at the time that 

 the only certain glimpse of the nucleus obtained in England was 

 by Sir John Herschel, at Hawkhursr, Kent.j 



The Comet 1880 b (Schauekle, April 6). — Admiral 

 Mouchez, Director of the Observatory of Paris, has communi- 

 cated to the Academy of Sciences observations of the comet 

 detected at Ann Arbor, Michigan, made by MM. Henry and 

 Bigourdan on April 8, 12, 16, and lS. Thecomet has a nucleus 

 as bright as a star of about um., and a fan-shaped tail of 

 3' or 4'. From the observations of April 8, 12, and 18, Mr. 

 Hind has deduced the following rough approximation to the 

 elements of the comet's orbit : — 



Perihelion passage 1880, July 17-8675 G.M.T. 



Longitude of perihelion 10044 



,, ascending node 260 11 



Inclination 57 28 



Logarithm of perihelion distance 0-21371 



Motion — retrograde. 



A calculation by MM. Holetschek and Zelbr of Vienna, founded 



on observations of April io, II, and 13, give the date of peri- 

 helion passage, June 1 1, and the longitude of perihelion 122° 43', 

 but it is a case where these elements are not likely to be accurately 

 fixed by the earlier computations. 



The following positions are derived from the above orbit : — 



h q \r t R.A. N.P.D. Log. Distance from 



h. m. o / Earth. Sun. 



April 30 614-9 ••• 22 49 ••• °'3374 ••• 0-2872 



May 2 6 15-3 ... 24 5 



4 ... .. 6 15-8 ... 25 18 ... 0-3453 ... 0-2810 

 6 6 16-4 ... 26 30 



5 6 17-2 ... 27 40 ... 0-3531 ... 0-2750 



GEOGRAPHICAL NOTES 



The medals annually given by the Royal Geographical Society 

 for competition among the principal public schools have been 

 awarded as follows: — Physical Geography (Examiner, Com- 

 mander V. L. Cameron), Gold Medal, David Bowie, Dulwich 

 College ; Silver Medal, A. L. Humphries, Liverpool College. 

 This medal was awarded by the Examiner to F. Taylor Sharpe, 

 of Liverpool College, who had gained it in 1879, and was, there- 

 fore disqualified. Political Geography (Examiner, Admiral Sir 

 Erasmus Ommanney), Gold Medal, Frederick Jas. Naylor, 

 Dulwich College; Silver Medal, Theodore Brooks, London 

 International College. 



At the meeting of the Geographical Society on Monday 

 evening, the Rev. C. T. Wilson, of the Church Missionary 

 Society's Nyanza Expedition, who has just returned to England 

 from Lake Victoria, read a paper on Uganda and its people. 

 The three Waganda chiefs who had accompanied him and Mr. 

 Felkin were present at the meeting. After recording his move- 

 ments since 1S76, Mr. Wilson gave a general description of the 

 physical aspect, climate and products of Uganda, adding some 

 remarks on the people, their constitutional arrangements, the 

 tenure of land, &c. Since Capt. Speke's time there had been a 

 considerable improvement among the Waganda, who had taken 

 to wearing cloth, and had become very teachable, some reaming 

 to speak Arabic and read Swahili in the Roman character, at the 

 mission station. The folk-lore and traditions of the country 

 afford a very promising field for research, and Mr. Wilson gave 

 an amusing instance in the reputed adventures of one Kinto with 

 the gods. The language belongs to the Bantu group, and is an 

 agglutinative one. It has, of course, to be reduced to writing 

 by the missionaries, who have found twenty-four Roman letters 

 sufficient for the purpose. Mr. Wilson stated that he had made 

 a collection of 5,000 words, as well as of fables, stories, and 

 songs. Reverting to the subject of geography, Mr. Wilson 

 averred that German and other writers had given erroneous 

 names to the lake, and that its true and only name was Nyan/.i 

 or Nyanja — a term which rightly belonged only to it. In the 

 course of a general outline of the configuration of the lake coast, 

 Mr. Wilson dwelt on the peculiar and large group of islands— 

 the natives say 400 in number — at the north-west corner of the 

 lake, which are very beautiful as to scenery, but separated by 

 difficult and intricate channels. The characteristics of the shore 

 are at present but little known, a remark which particularly 

 applies to the north-east corner, and generally the lake is very 

 imperfectly mapped. As is the case with Lake Nyassa, squalls 

 are the great danger of the Nyanza, and there are also some 

 peculiar currents which require investigation. Mr. Felkin, who 

 had formed one of the expedition sent up the Nile at the end of 

 1878, and had spent some three months at the lake, afterwards 

 read some desultory notes relating chiefly to the homeward 

 journey, in which he drew a terrible picture of the condition of 

 the Egyptian equatorial provinces since the suppression of the 

 slave-traders' rebellion. 



As might have been expected, the reception of Prof. 

 Nordenskjold and his fellow -voyagers at Stockholm was of the 

 most enthusiastic kind. The Vega, escorted by about 200 

 steamers, arrived at half-past ten o'clock on Saturday night. 

 The adjacent coasts were lit up for a distance of many miles, and 

 the city itself was splendidly illuminated. Near the landing- 

 place a special platform was erected, where Prof. Nordenskjold 

 and his companions were received and congratulated by the 

 municipal authorities. They proceeded immediately afterwards 

 to the Royal Castle, where they were welcomed by the Kings 

 Prof. Nordenskjold subsequently drove through the city to hi. 



