Vermont watchman and State journal. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1836-1883, 1847-01-28
VOL. XII, NO. n.---wHOLE NO. 2lO2.

poisonous, and we should dread more being
sufiocated by their breath, than stunned by
their blows.
We have already had occasion to state
that planetary system, attended with such
mass OF comets as ours, must appear, when =
seen from a distance, as a nebulous mass
containing stars. When we consider the
great length and breadth of the tails of COM
cts when they are within our system, and the
strange and unexpected fact, that the pebI-
losities of comets increase in proportion as
they recede from the sun, in place oS con-
tracing as we might have expected, when
they reach colder region, it became mat!
ter of certainty that our cometary system
must have the appearance of nebula,% and
that the matter which composes comets NAV
be the Unreasonable nebulous matter in MANY
parts of the heavens.
When the advocates of the undulatorv-
theory were embarrassed with difficulties.
they entered into an alliance, offensive and
defensive, with astronomical theorists. The
existence of rare elastic medium, difllused
through universal space. which that theory
required, was regarded as the resisting me-
dunn which retarded the motion and short
ened the periods of comets; and the chan
ges in the period of Encke's comet were
pronounced to be the undoubted result of
this obstructng force, although the very OPP
poste effect was produced on Halley's COM
ct, the period of which regularly increased
at every succeeding return The theorist,
however, is never perplexed, and his resour-
ces never. fail. Encke's comet and Halley's
move in opposite charlottesville one from
west to east, and the other from east to west;
and it has therefore been suggested that the
lumniferous ether revolves from west to east,
i'll virtue of a rotatory motion communica-
ted to it by the continued motion of the
planets in the same direction, thus producing
a different effect upon the two comets -
| When we consider the nature of a comet,
the variations in its phenomena during any
portion of its period, and the striking diff
ferences between its colour, its brightness,
and its apparent magnitude, at its success
sive Temperatures, we need not wonder that
body thus susceptible of change, and ac-
tually changed, should not return in precise
ly the same period of time. If the other
comets, like Enckes, expand as they enter
the colder recesses fspace, their tails, which
are even when near the sun one million Of
| miles III length, may encounter other OBJECTS
or come into mutual collision, and thus de-
prive one or other of the conflicting bodies
of portion of its mass. Our knowledge,
in short, of the nature and design of COM
cts, of the functions which they perform DUR
ing their long residence in foreign climes, is
so utterly insignificant, that to make it the
foundation or the support of any theory is
unworthy of sound philosophy. Those
SPECTATORS, who believe there is a compen-
satory adjustment in the mutual action of
the planets, in virtue of which the solar sys-
TEN will, if left to itself, have an eternal du.
ration, will not readily admit the existence
Of a resisting medium which must ultimate
ly destroy it, and those who, like Sir Isaac
Newton, believe that the sun is recruited by
comets, and that the vapours of comets, when
rariiied and diffused through space, MAY, un-
der the influence of their own gravity, be
attracted down to the planets, and become
intermingled with their atmosphere, will not
consider the supposition unreasonable that a
comet does not return to our system either
ofthe same tonnage or with the same freight.t