The comets continued traveling along in this sociable manner for four months, at an almost unvarying distance of about 165,000 miles, each developing meanwhile a very bright nucleus and diminutive tail half a degree in length, or one tenth the distance separating the pointers in Ursa Major. Sometimes one comet would be devoid of a tail, sometimes the other, so that one might almost imagine the tail exchanging owners, for the comets were rarely both adorned therewith at the same time. During the latter part of February, Lieutenant Maury, at Washington, D. C., saw an arc of light extending from the large comet to the small one, forming a sort of bridge between the two, this occurring when the small comet was at its brightest. When the large comet had regained its superiority it threw out new rays, which gave it the appearance of having three tails, each adjacent tail making an angle of 120 degrees with its neighbor, one of the tails being the bridge to the new comet. This produced the effect of an arch in the heavens, through which the stars were seen to pass. One can imagine messages passing to and fro along this bridge of light between the twin comets, and a possible farewell as they drifted further apart. At their return in August, 1852, they were separated by about one million five hundred thousand miles, and as so often happens in the case of twins it was impossible to tell which was which. The comets were not seen at their next return, in May, 1859, because they were lost in the glare of sunlight, for the same reason that we are unable to see stars in the daytime. At the next expected visit when the comets were looked for, in January, 1866, they were nowhere to be seen. What had happened in the interval no one knows, but in 1872 the whole astronomical world was startled by a telegram from an astronomer named Klinkerfues of Göttingen, on November 30, to Pogson, the government astronomer at Madras, which read as follows: Biela touched earth on 27th, search near Theta Centauri. Accordingly, a search was made, with the extraordinary result that a comet _was_ found, but not _the_ comet. Observations were obtained of it on December 2 and 3, but bad weather and the advance of twilight made further search impossible. When the track of the new comet, for such it proved to be, was eventually followed, it was found to be moving along a different route from the one previously followed by the comet of Biela. Nevertheless, by a remarkable coincidence it happened to be passing by or near the place where this comet was wont to wander, until he took unto himself a companion comet, which seems to have led him astray.