Abstract
A SHORT time ago I got the loan of an old number of Harper's Monthly (March 1889), good reading matter being very acceptable, however old, in this outlandish place, in which I read an article, on the origin of celestial species, by J. Norman Lockyer. F.R.S., Cor. Inst. France, that set me thinking of what I observed of the great comet of 1882, when it made its tremendous plunge round the sun, on September 18. At that time I was master of a small vessel, trading in the Society Islands; and on the day mentioned—in latitude 16° 25′ S., longitude 151° 57′ W. of Greenwich, a position about midway between the two islands Bolabola and Maupiti (the Maurua of Cook)—I saw, with the naked eye, the comet travel about 90° of the circle of the sun's disk, between sunrise and noon; but what made it most remarkable to us was that it should be possible for us, in a perfectly clear sky, to be able to watch it all, from sunrise to noon, with very little more distress to the eye than if in a clear night looking at a full moon.
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