To be lost is interesting, especially for a comet, when one considers the vast expanse of highways and byways in starland, but the climax of the tragedy in connection with this special comet was not reached until its orbit crossed that of the earth on November 27, 1872. On that eventful night the sky seemed to be literally ablaze with meteors, which fell in swarms and showers of dazzling gleams of light, the downpour lasting from seven o’clock in the evening until one o’clock next morning, the maximum being attained at nine o’clock. We are told that the total number observed in England was estimated at a hundred and sixty thousand. They all came from the same part of the sky, radiating from a point near the beautiful double star Gamma in the constellation of Andromeda. But what was the meaning of the display? Had it been caused by an encounter of the earth with the scattered fragments of the lost comet? It certainly could not have had any connection with the comet itself, which, providing it still existed, had passed that way three months before. It was more likely the débris of its train scattered along its path after its breaking up in 1846. There seems to be no doubt of the identity of this swarm of meteors with the comet of Biela, for on November 27, 1885, a similar encounter took place, providing a magnificent display of meteors observed all over Europe, just at the moment when the earth was due at a crossing in the former path of the comet. On that same evening, a piece of meteoric iron fell at Mazapil, in northern Mexico, during the course of the shower, and according to Professor Young, “the coincidence may be accidental, but is certainly interesting. Some high authorities speak confidently of this piece of iron _as a piece of Biela’s comet itself_.” (_General Astronomy_, C. A. Young.) In 1892 and 1898, when the earth again crossed the former path of the comet, a similar display occurred, though on a minor scale, and some of the scattered cometary fragments may still be looked for on the evenings from November 17 to 27. They are recognizable from their slow motion, short trains, and from the fact that they all radiate from the second-magnitude star Gamma in Andromeda. (Incidentally, this is the star so charmingly dealt with by Dr. Holmes, in the _Poet at the Breakfast Table_, really the astronomer of the breakfast table, as suggested by conversations and correspondence between my father and Oliver Wendell Holmes.)