396 ~=6B. A. Gould—Southern Comet of February, 1880. 
on Plate XVIII, figure 1, and one of them is more fully illus- 
trated in figure 2. The inner anterior margin of each bone is 
Yale College, New Haven, April 11, 1880. 
Art. LVI.—On the Southern Comet of February, 1880 ; by 
B. A, Goup. 
On the evening of February 2nd, before the twilight was 
fully past, my attention was drawn to a remarkable streak of 
light in the southwest, which extended through about 18°, at 
an angle not much inclined to the vertical. Its lower ex 
tremity was perhaps 20° above the horizon, and the brightness 
was in no part much, if indeed any, greater than that of a star 
of the 54 magnitude. It seemed to taper in both directions, 
fading away at each extremity, and to be between 1° and 2 
wide in the middle. A moment's reflection assured me that 
what I saw must be part of the tail of a comet, the lower por 
tion being obscured by haze and its nucleus being below the 
horizon, which was concealed by a bank of clouds. No time 
was lost in preparing for an accurate drawing of its position, 
but the mist and clouds obscured it completely within a very 
few minutes, before any delineation could be made. Messrs. 
W. G. Davis and ©. W. Stevens did, however, plot from 
memory upon the index-map of the Uranometry a sketch of its 
position and form, which seemed correct to both. 
