Genre:

Letter, Spoof

Subjects:

Astronomy, Scientific Practitioners, Exhibitions, Reading

    Three Londoners relate their observations of a comet. Daniel Dineout initially mistook the object for Boccius, but was convinced it was a comet owing to its 'whirling motion' and overwhelming glare. Simon Stargaze reports that, having read John F W Herschel's and James South's letters to The Times, he stood on Waterloo Bridge and observed a 'luminous' body in the heavens which later turned out to be an 'illuminated trunk over the trunk-maker's'. The secretary of the Great Western Railway tells Punch that the object 'with a long tail attached' may have been 'the engine called Comet' and warns of the dangers of trusting 'scientific men'. A Mr Jones tells Punch that he saw the comet in a lecture at the Adelaide Gallery.