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CHAPTER X.

REMARKABLE COMETS.

Suggested list of those which deserve the name.—The Great Comet of 1811.—The Great Comet of 1843.—The Great Comet of 1858.—Evidence to enable these three Comets to be compared.—The Great Comet of 1861.—The Comet of 1862 (iii.).—The Comet of 1874 (iii.).—The Comet of 1880 (i.).—The Great Comet of 1882 (iii.).—Peculiarities of its orbit.—The Comet of 1887 (i.).—Sawerthal's Comet of 1888 (i.).—The Comet of 1901 (i.).

The comets which might be included in a list with the adjective "remarkable" attached to it are very numerous; and I shall for the most part treat the word "remarkable" as applying rather to naked-eye peculiarities and splendour than to physical peculiarities revealed only by the use of the telescope. I must therefore limit myself to a selection, premising that Grant included the following as proper to be classed as "remarkable":—

1066

1106

1145

1265

1378

1402

1456

1531

1556

1577

1607

1618

1661

1680

1682

1689

1729

1744

1759

1769

1811

1823

1835

1843

1858

1861

Grant's list was, if I remember right, put forth in a lecture which he gave at the Royal Institution in 1870, and the additions which should be made to it to represent the period 1870-1909 are singularly few, the chief of them being the Comet of 1874 (iii.), best known as Coggia's Comet; and the Comets of 1881 (iii.), and 1882 (iii.); but the large comets which appeared in the Southern hemisphere in 1880 (i.), 1887 (i.), and 1901 (i.) have some claim to notice. By the