548 
[Jan. Ij 
On the Word Canteen. 
Lothbury. The result rs this; the train 
is now on the milky way, dense near the 
head, of a silver light, and brighter at 
seven than the milky way, which is now 
very luminous. 
The extremity of the train blends it¬ 
self with the milky way, so as not to be 
ascertainable, but it has at least 10*^ in 
length, and near 4 in breadth. It ap¬ 
pears much more in perspective, and 
more thrown back from the eye, than 
formerly. 
I suppose it will continue visible in 
the evening, till the first week in next 
month, when it will be very near tlie 
Horse at sunset. 
It is near the equator, which it appears 
that it will cross with 290° of R. A,; which 
line, conrinued, would cut the ecliptic in 
23° nearly of Vf, vvith nearly 15° of 
S.D. 
It is now (17' p. 8,) very conspicuous, 
and forms an obtuse triangle with Aquila 
and Lyra, of which Lyra is the shorter 
side. It forms with tw'o other stars the 
vertex of a nearly isosceles triangle. 
It is now above 50° from the sun, yet 
I cannot say that I discover any change, 
though perhaps the deviation of the cen¬ 
tre of the star, from the centre of the di¬ 
viding line, is an indication of one. 
The star is certainly very bright. 
143° of R.A. since its first appear¬ 
ance, is a great progress. If it were 
moving in a circular orbit, at nearly our 
distance, it would even so exceed 232 
millions of miles in 91 days or more, than 
the diameter of the earth’s orbit. The 
motion of the earth in the same time is 
less than f of that of the comet. The 
real motion of the comet I regard as con¬ 
siderably greater. 
I would observe also, that,with so much 
difference of distance from the sun, as 
focus, the difference of train, will by no 
means correspond, nor the quantity of 
light, nor the distinctness at all times of 
the train. I leave it to professed opti¬ 
cians to calculate the convexity and ra¬ 
dius of a denticular spheroid, vvl)ich,at a 
distance of al out 100 millions of miles 
from the sun, should project his image in 
a f)encil of rays 30 millions in length. 
A it would be still far harder for an 
op-ician to explain how it should still 
pnoiect a distinct and vivid pencil, not- 
wi'hstnnding a vast change of focus. 
‘ i" i;r s .v sed Aquila, 1 have seen 
U :as!; uigft, {iue 44i of Dccc''iber); it is 
e’-en mucn more visible than it was 
the else of August-: the nucleus still 
distinct, and the luminous coma, for 
about 2° above the head, dense and 
bright; the length of the coma still full 7°, 
and its breadth not much diminished, 
I think the comet (wduch I observed 
carefully last night, 5tb of December), is 
very clearly encreasing in brightness. 
This may be understood, if it be ad¬ 
mitted that it has an orbit of very mode¬ 
rate eccentricity. Considering its dis¬ 
tance from tlie sun, the angle of its or¬ 
bit must, I think, have elevated it above 
80 millions of miles above the plane of 
the earth’s orbit. It is now come down, 
instead of 72, to less than 28 from the 
ecliptic ; the consequence of which is a 
difference of near | in its distance of 
elevation. This, probably, may eveti 
more than counterpoise its slow and mo¬ 
derate recess from the earth and sun. 
Capel Lofft. 
To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine, 
SIR, 
BEG to observe, (alluding to a re¬ 
mark in your last, p. 464,) that I 
have found the word Cakteen in one of 
our dictionaries, and only one, which is 
the Encyclop.i;j>ia Londinensis, now 
publishing. It would tend to lessen the 
labour of the editors of that work, and of 
other dictionaries which may hereafter 
appear, if the correspondents of such 
widely-extended publications as the 
Monthly Magazine would from time to 
time furnish a list of such words as may 
occur to them which are not to be found 
in dictionaries. 
In a former number of your Magazine 
I noticed a query relative to the genera¬ 
tion of fishes, and how the phenomena 
might be brought under the inspection of 
an individual, and in a room, I propose, 
in your next, to give a full answ-er to that 
query, in an extract from the Encyclo¬ 
paedia I have mentioned. 
In tire mean time I will just mention 
that the information is to be derived from 
the article Ichthyology^ in the tenth vo¬ 
lume, the last published of that work. 
Index. 
To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine, 
SIR, 
S OiSiE months ago, I obt-erved in your 
Number for May an enquiry, by A 
Constant Reader,” concerning the effects 
of the abolition of the slave-trade, “on 
the unhappv victims of avarice in tlie 
island-,” including a request “ to be in¬ 
formed, by some one who has lately vi- 
‘sited 
