It seems that on July 11, 1881, after a night’s observation of the stars, Mr. Denning, just before daylight and preparatory to ceasing work, looked in the direction of the constellation Auriga, the Charioteer. The idea occurred to him that it might be worth while to sweep the surrounding region with his comet eyepiece, but he hesitated, not thinking the prospect sufficiently inviting. There is a well-known saying that he who hesitates is lost, and on this occasion Mr. Denning undoubtedly missed an opportunity for finding a comet. Three nights later a bright comet in Auriga was discovered by Schaeberle, an American astronomer at Ann Arbor, Michigan! That same year, on October 4, Mr. Denning had been observing the planet Jupiter before sunrise, when once more he hesitated as to the advisability of making an attempt at comet-seeking, but, profiting by his former experience, he made use of the comet eyepiece with good results. To quote his own words— “at almost my first sweep I alighted upon a suspicious object which afterwards proved itself a comet of short period,” which means that it is a frequent visitor to the neighborhood of the sun. These facts are encouraging, and still more so when we remember that Kepler said, “there are as many comets in the sky as there are fishes in the sea.” The first woman to discover a comet was Caroline Herschel, the sister of the famous astronomer, Sir W. Herschel, and she had eight to her credit. In her diary, which has been most carefully preserved by Miss Francesca Herschel at Observatory House, Slough, there is an account of her first discovery which occurred on August 1, 1786. During the absence of her brother in Germany she availed herself of the opportunity to make use of a small Newtonian telescope he had given her, in “sweeping the skies.” Her “sweeper,” as she termed it, was of 27-inch focal length, a power of about 20, and a field of view 2° 12′. Miss Herschel had been observing nebulæ when she saw what she believed might prove to be a comet. At one o’clock on the morning of August 2 she made the following brief note in her diary: “The object last night _is_ a comet,” and she wrote to Dr. Blagden of the Royal Astronomical Society, asking him to take the comet under his protection “in regard to its right ascension and declination,” which correspond to latitude and longitude of a place on earth. The right ascension of a heavenly body is measured eastward along the celestial equator, from the vernal equinox to the hour circle on which the object lies. Declination of a heavenly body is its distance north or south of the celestial equator, measured on a great circle passing through the pole and the celestial body.