However, we were all mistaken.  The comet of 1882 retreated on such a course, and with such variation of velocity, as to show that its real period must be measured, not by months, as had been supposed, nor even by years, but by centuries.  Probably it will not return till 600 or 700 years have passed.  Had this not been proved, we might have been not a little perplexed by the return of apparently the same comet in this present year.  A comet was discovered in the south early in January, whose course, dealt with by Professor Kruger, one of the most zealous of our comet calculators, is found to be partially identical with that of the four remarkable comets we have been considering.  Astronomers have not been moved by this new visitant on the well-worn track as we were by the arrival of the comet of 1882, or as we should have been if either the comet of 1882 had never been seen or its path had not been shown to be so wide ranging.  Whatever the comet of the present year may be, it was not the comet of 1882 returned.  No one even supposes that it was the comet of 1880, or 1843, or 1668.  Nevertheless, rightly apprehended, the appearance of a comet traveling on appreciably the same track as those four other comets is of extreme interest, and indeed practically decisive as to the interpretation we must place on these repeated coincidences.

Observe, we are absolutely certain that the five comets are associated together in some way; but we are as absolutely certain that they are not one and the same comet which had traveled along the same track and returned after a certain number of circuits.  We need not trouble ourselves with the question whether two or more of the comets may not have been in reality one and the same body at different returns.  It suffices that they all five were not one; since we deduce precisely the same conclusion whether we regard the five as in reality but four or three or two.  But it may be mentioned in passing as appearing altogether more probable, when all the evidence is considered, that there were no fewer than five distinct comets, all traveling on what was practically the selfsame track when in the neighborhood of the sun.

There can be but one interpretation of this remarkable fact—­a fact really proved, be it noticed (as I and others have maintained since the retreat of the comet of 1882), independently of the evidence supplied by the great southern comet of the present year.  These comets must all originally have been one comet, though now they are distinct bodies.  For there is no reasonable way (indeed, no possible way) of imagining the separate formation of two or more comets at different times which should thereafter travel in the same path.

No theory of the origin of comets ever suggested, none even which can be imagined, could account for such a peculiarity.  Whereas, on the other hand, we have direct evidence showing how a comet, originally single, may be transformed into two or more comets traveling on the same, or nearly the same, track.