The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1880-03-27 00:00:00

SPECULATIONS ABOUT COMETS.

In a few weeks the comet heralded by Don Pedro
of Brazil is to make its appearance, and, as has been
the case on several former occasions of the like kind,
there are not wanting prophets to foretell, nor persons
to believe, that the end of the world is at hand. This
event has, however, been predicted so often that the
announcement somewhat palls upon the public, who,
with a few exceptions, bear it with amazing sang
froid, going about their usual work, buying, selling,
and making provision for a future which they
refuse to believe will be limited to a few weeks.
How and under what conditions will the world
end? This is a question which many scientific
brains have fatigued themselves in endeavouring to
solve without reaching any satisfactory conclusion.
According to a French meteorologist, M. Vivacey,
one planet will die, so to say, a natural death, and,
after having passed through the successive stages of
infancy, youth, maturity, and old age, will expire
worn out for warmth. The atmosphere which we
breathe envelopes the earth in a sort of garment
retaining the sun's heat. When this garment is
worn out, the heat will vanish, and ulti-
mately a glacial cold, inexorable and relentless, will
spread over our sphere its mantle of death. Snow will
invade valleys, plains, and cities with incessant
but slow march, towns and villages will be abandoned
to the silent destroyer, and our race will be driven to
seek warmer climates; the tropics will in the course
of time be the sole habitable region, the extent of
which will itself become gradually restricted, and
humanity, crowded together without sufficient elbow
room, so to say, will commence a war of extermina-
tion, in which the weaker will go to the wall to make room
for the stronger to live, When affairs have reached
this crisis European capitals will long have ceased. to
be, and will have become the subject of historical
dissertation, ships being sent across seas of ice to

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verify the fact that vast deserts of icebergs, tenanted
by wolves, were once centres of civilisation. The whole
earth, says M. Vivarez, will be transformed into a
frozen and uninhabitable plain, and to find any
vestige of great and popular France will be as hard a
a task for the scientfdic explorer as is now that of
reaching the Poles. The human race will con-
tinue to carry on wars of extermination, animal
life will become scarce, until one day the sun's rays
will shine upon a lugubrious spectacle the
frozen corpses of the last human, family dead of
cold and suffocation on the borders of the last sea
dried up. Thus will the busy world of to-day end,
according to this savant's hypothesis, which, at any
rate, is more rational than that of a German colleague,
who predicts that the world will end by the universal
suicide of its inhabitants, grown weary of everything,
having discovered everything, invented everything,
enjoyed everything, and who, to cure themselves
radically of ennui engendered by satiety, will unani-
mously decree universal death.—Evening Standard.