[Illustration: The Constellations, though unnamed, can readily be
identified, when it is noted that the Comet's course, as here
represented, began in the constellation of the Crane.]
However, at that time no very special attention was directed to the
resemblance between the paths of the comets of 1843 and 1668. It was not
regarded as anything very new or striking that a comet should return
after making a wide excursion round the sun; and those who noticed that
the two comets really had traversed appreciably the same path around the
immediate neighborhood of the sun, simply concluded that the comet of
1668 had come back in 1843, after 175 years, and not necessarily for the
first time.
It must be noticed, however, before leaving this part of the record,
that the comet of 1843 was suspected of behaving in a rather strange way
when near the sun. For the first observation, made rather roughly,
indeed, with a sextant, by a man who had no idea of the interest his
observation might afterward have, could not be reconciled by
mathematicians (including the well-known mathematician, Benjamin Pierce)
with the movement of the comet as subsequently observed. It seemed as
though when in the sun's neighborhood the comet had undergone some
disturbance, possibly internal, which had in slight degree affected its
subsequent career.
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