11 
Again in 184G came the separation of Biela’s comet into two. 
These were long followed up by Plantamour, both by observation 
and calculation • until he at length proved them to be each pro- 
ceeding on its own independent course through space, quite un- 
influenced by the other. It was but a small telescopic comet at any 
time, until that startling telegraphic announcement of Herr Klin- 
kerfues to Mr. Pogson at the Madras Observatory, on December 2 
(1872), thus concentrating the results of his long and difficult 
orbital calculations “Biela touched earth on November 27, search 
near 0 centauri.” Pogson accordingly turned his telescope in that 
southern direction, and found a retreating, and already far-off patch 
of cometary matter in that quarter. But what had the inhabitants 
of the northern side of the earth witnessed on the 27th of Novem- 
ber 1 ? A brilliant display of shooting stars so-called, or isolated 
meteoric stones, darting through the upper rarefied air at the rate of 
more than 1000 miles a minute, and taking the regular meteoric 
observers quite by surprise, as being an altogether abnormal and 
unexpected vision to them. 
Here, accordingly, was admirable authority for Plantamour adding 
to the Besselian astronomy of cometary orbits, the physical studies 
of the Aragonian school. But his observatory was ill supplied with 
instruments of size and quality adapted to such researches, and 
neither the University of Geneva, nor the politicians thereof, were 
inclined to spend anything to improve them. So, by noble self- 
denial, and out of the economies of his ancestors, Plantamour 
supplied a fine equatorial, with objective of 10 inches aperture, with 
tower and revolving dome, to the establishment ; and kept it 
thenceforward at excellent work for the credit of the community 
and the promotion of astronomy. 
The situation, too, was deserving of being so powerfully instru- 
mentalised. No less than 10 degrees of latitude further south than 
Edinburgh, raised on a plateau 1200 feet above the sea-level, in a 
drier and generally warmer air, and with far less of dreadful coal 
smoke belching around from blackened and blackening chimneys ; 
a telescope could there be used to its full advantage ; and the 
climate itself would afford, especially in the land, and to a country- 
man, of Saussure, a most deeply interesting study. 
Prom his very first appointment to the observatory, Plantamour 
