The Austin weekly statesman. (Austin, Tex.) 1883-1898, 1883-11-22
ABOUT COMETS.

opera glasses, generally present the
appearance of bright globes, rapidly
emitting golden globules in glittering
corruscations into space. Whether
such particles are actually emitted OF
not, they certainly appear to be struck
off from comets in dazzling rap:dity
and profusion. This may be nothing
more than the illusory effect of the
peculiar glistening of the brilliant
atoms, whatever they may be, of
which comets are composed,
| as occasioned, perhaps, by
the startling force and velocity with
which they are precipitated through
the immensely of space, Just as the
globules of the water of the ocean,
when disturbed by storm, glitter in
the moonlight from every particle of
the globules themselves, which in turn
refract each others light and break
the emissions into multiplied thou
sands of reflective particles of their
own. How this may be, of course,
cannot be determined land it is ques-
ton which may never be solved, I'M
less we should be subjected, some day,
to the apprehended catastrophe of the
striking of a comet upon the earth.
Experience has shown that we need
not be afraid of comets tails, what
ever their composition, although they
are said to be millions of miles wide
and hundreds of millions of miles
long, and thus, so far as mere dimen-
sions are concerned, would seem to
be capable of brushing away
the earth, and, for all we
know, even the sun, moon and
stars, to-no one knows where.
1t is some relief, however, as far as
science goes, to be measurably as
sured that comets tail is nothing, or
next to nothing-a harmless phenom-
enon. a sort of vapory or atmospheric
Illusion, a shadowy milky-way, some
how occasioned by the tremendous
and accelerated velocity with which
the comet disturbs the great oceans of
atmosphere through which it passes,
just as the leviathan, surging through
the sea, marks his passage by the
foamy current which he leaves in
crested tracery of phosphorescenJ brill
iancy behind him. But whether mist
or myth, or whatever it may be,
comets tail is most probably harm
less mystery, from the fact that the
earth has been known to cut trail
through one, eight thousand miles
wide and two hundred and fifty thou
sand miles long, before it gets out of
the caudal ENHANCEMENT, all without
anybody being caught up by it, or able
to catch it, or find SO much as a parti-
Gle of it, or in any particular sense
realize its presence, though it is sup
posed to haYe left some influences be-
hind it, tending to, more or
less, humidity of the atmosphere.
AS to the Cogger comet of 1874, it was
observed, as if in confirmation of the
evidently sublimated character of its
tail, whether material or immaterial,
that star, which the slightest cloud
obscured, shone through it with SEEM
lngly I'm mined luster. So comet's
tail must be a thin and harmless
thing, not likely to brush the world
away even in its most majestic sweep.
But, though well enough assured as
to the innocence of comets tails, we
are not so sure about the material1ty
or immateriality of their frey-looking
heads, which may be solid burning
globes and very dangerous things
an important consideration should the
approaching comet turn tail and come
rushing head-formost toward the
earth; for, despite the calculations of
astronomers, she may be the very
comet of 1843, which, like that of 1880,
approached so near the sun as to have
been exposed to heat 1000 fold
greater than that of red hot iron. If
so, unless she wheel around that
great orb with an amazing velocity
like the comet of 1880 which swept by
It's point of perhelion at the rate of
about four hundred thousand miles
en- hour, so rapidly as to prevent ig-
milton, our new visitor may 3
burning sun herself, and in case
it would be preferable that dash
were thrown across her patti and a
period put to her destructive course.
Seriously. from all that may be gath
cred from science, no danger is to be
apprehended; and comets would seem
to be but huge meteors, any one of
which, says Prof. Swift, may be COM
pressed into an armful of substan-
tive matter and the par
ticles thrown off from them
may be, but so many diminutive me-
teo1s, which originally were supposed
to form the meteoric showers which
haye followed the appearance of the
comets themselves. According to
Whisten, a comet produced the deluge
and in course of time the same comet
may return and cause the "great con-
fagration" alluded to in the Bible.
Whisten even made the calculation
and proved, to his satisfaction alone,
that the great comet in question ap-
peared at the time of the delage,
when it came so near to the earth in
its passage towards the sun that the
earth, he argued, attracted its vapor
which fell upon it in consequence in
the great flood recorded in scripture.
His rather remarkable theory was
that comets, in their vast orbits, go SO
far out into space as to become fro
zen bodies, and that the vapor which
they gather up in their projection to
aphelion, their farthest point from
the sun, becomes CONCEALED into ice,
which melts as they approach their
perihelion, or nearest point to the
same body and that sometimes
they go so near that great heating
centre as in turn to become them
selves burning worlds, and are thus
capable of destroying other bodies,
either by flood or fire. Whisten is IN
doubted'y mistaken in his theory.
Comets are more probably natures
| media for distributing solar heat or
dispensing the moisture gathered from
neither space to the world and other
possibly inhabitable spheres of the
universe, and are thus grand dispen-
sation of divine providence.
INDICATIONS point to Gen. Sher-