The true Democrat., 1857-05-26
romets and their Influence upon the Earth

aff tbe present unusual state of the weather .bat cratic visitant. Several articles have ..sptlv appeared in city paper, alludng to
 .Losubiect in this light, which have been copied 1 sober earnestness into large number of ".,ntry papers. Such opinions in a respecta- ,sn,ner, to say the least are foolish and ab- sud. ,.,..,,-.
 \ ., of worlds. They are in large numbers \ are constituent parts of the solar system ~bov are controlled in their motions by the E ,o laws that govern the other bodies of the 4oo The number of comets is supposed hv ,a astronomerS to amount to several millions
 rho actual number, however, observed since
 ta commencement of the Christian era
 'ornts only to about seven or eight hundred
 nftbis number thirty are known to exist whose
 norbelion distance IS less than the radius of the i,ht of Mercury; and from this data M Araoo
 he computed the whole number within the ,lar system at not less than five hundred mil.
 lions.
 The whole number of comets whose periodic
 .tgrn has been calculated with any degree of ,rainty, is, we believe, but three or four.- 0oe of these, which has obtained a certain de- --ae of celebrity, is that which is usually dis toouished by the name of Halev's Comet mi. comet appeared with considerable splen
 5or and exhibited tail thirty degrees in sngth. in the year 1882. Dr. Halev. who calculated its elements from its perihelon pas. sara concluded that it was identical with the great comets which appeared 1456 153l, 1907.
 whose elements he had also ascer aimed and found the intervals to be about seventy i've or seventv-six wears. He ventured to predict that F .kz
 the year 1758. The calculation was accordino- I ly verified, for the comet appeared in the latter
 part of December of that year. It will also be
 remembered that thls comet appeared in about
 the same period in 1885
 Another comet which has engaged the par
 ticular attention of astronomers of our own day.
 $ distinguished from all preceding comets by
 the sto tness of its periodic revolution, and
 is usually denomnated E,ecle's Comet. in
 honor of Professor Eucke, of Berlin, who first ascertained its periodic return It wa, discovered at Marseilles, on the 26th of No.
 yember, 1918. It has since returned at inter
 yas of little more than three years or POO
 days. This comet crosses the orbit of our earth sxty times in the course of a century. Another comet more recently discovered and krown by the name of Biela's Comet. makes $ Us rcNOIWlhD dDuuu luG sun ll about years. From the times it had re-appeared NJ pamoiseau predicted that it would cross the plane of the earth'S orbit on the 29th of Octo- Der, 1883, lftle betore mdaigh, at point at which the earth would be at the time, and cuse the destruction of our globe. This pre- drt'on was circulated in the French and Ger man journals and excited no small degree of alarm among the people. A distinguished Pro- lessor Tn Paris put the question to the academy of sciences, whether it did not feel itself bound il duty to refute, as speedily as possible. this as'eruon. Popular terrorS," he observed ..are productive of serious consequences" and then feeHed to accidents and disorders which fol- lowed similar threat, imprudentlv communi. cted to the Academy by M deLalande. in l773, when persons of weak mind died of trLht and women miscarried" In order to dspe such fears and to illustrate the nature of these bodies, NJ. Arago published an excellent a'd popular treatise on comets, in the " d1,tlu- Cs' ot 1852, which we would recommend to tne attention of journalists at the present time in our country.
 In the dark ages the appearance of comets ~as supposed to be the forerunner of wars tevolutonS and other calamites, to cause ex- treme cold at one time, and to scorch the earth Nth heat at another; but at tn present en- l-htened age of the world we should expect nen to attribute these events to their natural and more rational causes.
 The present extraordinary cold spring is un- aoubtedIy local, etfecting only our own part of the earth, while another portion may be suffer lhE under an unusual degree of heat. This Is olten the case whether a comet is visible or not n lhere Is a comet approaching within sight of cur earth It Is still many millions of miles dis pant, and It's Influence upon the earth, it need Dot be expected, will be more sensibly felt than oi the millions of others that have passed through our system.
 2 Comets, either large or small either visible 10 the naked eye or through a telescope, make tl-F appearance on an average almost every year. and Is It to be supposed that the variations lu tAe weather that we experience on the earth sfe to be attributed to them? May we not nore reasonably look to terrestrial causes for all the vdried meteorological changes with winch Ne are visited?
 Although Comets are governed in their mo- iouS by the same physical laws which regu- hie the motions of the planets, yet unlike the
 dhets they approach from all points of the leAvens and travcrsein every direction, in orbits t1Jemely eiptical. Some in their periheliou ssA-e, as We have stated, approach within the .f, 'i Mercury others come only within the tiAts ol the more remote planets and fly off asHu into the immenstv of space, probably NlAiu the reach of other systems, to return iIau after countless ages, while others fly of ieyer to return.
 Oitne physical constitution of comets but It, fe ls known. It has been coniectured that they are composed of masses of vapor, many times more light than the atmosphere we breathe; the heads or nuclei of some are opake While others are transparent A correspondent "rtng to uS a few days since, on the subject of mets, says: h 1885, while viewing IIaIey'S comet with a telescope of medium power, saw Star of the twelfth magnitude within few t4foni, (augular) of the centre of the head of toe comet, and that is large comet" Stars aFe frequently seen through the densest part of emets, so that their influence upon the other boles of the pianatory system must be small, tad were it possible for one to come into con- taet with the earth, if it produced no other Effect but the concassion, it would probably be ieSs disastrous than a light shock of an earth caake
 Some years since a comet passed through the lnist of the satellites of Jupiter It is from ile echpses of these satellites that the longi- taie on the earth is obtained, and the tables are calculated for many years ahead, and when tae astronomers of Europe witnessed it's posi- ton am ng the Moons of Jupiter, they had no ooubt these small bodies would either be iarown out of their orbits, or their motions greatly disturbed and accordingly the Astrono- ner Royal of Greenwich, was ordered to make tae calculations over again, but when he began De soon found that their fiery visitor had done io harm. Not the least percepdbe change lad been wrought in the movements of these bodies, but their attraction upon the frail mate faI of the comet had retarded its movements a Lumber of days.
 To suppose that the Almighty Architect of
 the Universe should display such wisdom as
 mark the beauty and harmony of all the move hents of the heavenly bodies, and then to suffer s'y of them to be destroyed or their move neatS in any way to be disturbed by comet, is llN0uS in the extreme. But even admitting lAe possibility that the earth may at some time le destroyed by the collision with a comet, the