Until the photographic eyes of Science detected the peculiarities of comets, and mathematicians calculated with unerring accuracy their comings and goings, they were looked upon, as we have already seen, with more or less suspicion and dread. Nowadays, we know that these “airy nothings,” as Sir John Herschel termed them, have been unjustly maligned. Were they given the power of speech, they could a tale unfold of adventurous thrills and overwhelming disasters encountered during their voyages in space, far exceeding in interest any story of terrestrial adventure. It would take the pen of a Jules Verne and an author gifted with his vivid imagination to describe the erratic career of a comet. Take for instance the tragic fate of the headless comet of 1887, which was described by Dr. Thomé of the Cordoba University as: “a beautiful object with a narrow, straight, sharply defined graceful tail over fifty degrees long. It was shining with a soft starry light against a dark sky, beginning apparently without a head, and gradually widening and fading as it extended upwards.”[4] Now the popular idea of a well-regulated comet is a star with a tail, but a tail without an accompanying star seems preposterous, yet a headless comet this object remained as viewed with the naked eye. The why and the wherefore of the tragedy is unknown, and whether it ever had a head and what became of it remains one of the many unsolved problems of the sky. Still more remarkable is the career of the famous comet of Biela, from its first appearance as viewed by mortal eyes on March 8, 1772, until its final disappearance, a century later, in a veritable blaze of celestial fireworks. Its story reads like a novel, and is far more fascinating because it is fact and not fiction. The hero is a faint, insignificant-looking object which was discovered by Montaigne of Limoges, already referred to as the comet-hunter who so indiscreetly found the thirteenth comet for which his colleague Messier was industriously searching. Little did Montaigne guess that this foggy speck of light which was so faint that it could only be seen with the aid of his small telescope would one day attract worldwide attention. Its nondescript appearance, with a tail only one-eighth the diameter of the moon, made it apparently scarcely worthy of more than passing notice. Had Montaigne concentrated his efforts on finding out its peculiarities and tracing its path, his name would have been forever connected with the little wanderer, instead of being entered in the annals of astronomy as merely the first to see it.