Washington sentinel., 1898-07-02
Possible Passage OF the Earth
Through a NeOula.
Eisexayv DfgSsL
Lfteyayy Digest

So called clark DAYS" of which
a number OF remarkable ones have
been recorded in the earth,s his
tory, have usually been explained
bv the presence Of thick smoke
Iue to great forest fires, accom-
,anied perhaps by some peculiar
atmosphere conditions. There
have always been few, however,
who have thought that thIs hypoth-
esis does not furnish complete
exclamation, and the observations
made on a series Of such days that
occurred in Siberia in 1896 seems
20 strengthen the case OF these
doubters. If we are to believe
official reports, the dense smoke
that covered halt the continent Of
Asia on those days was due neither
TO fires nor to volcanic eruptions.
1t is the opinion Of M. Adam
RzyszczewslSi, who describes the
phenomenon IN the Bulletin de Ia
S0cieke AstyoHOmiqNs, Paris, that
the earth at that time was passing
through what he calls a great cos
mic cloud-perhaps a gaseous
nebula. The only trouble is that
in this case it would seem that the
whole earth ought to have been
equally plunged in the smoky SUBJ
stance, but he explains ingenl-
ously the fact that II was not, as
will be seen at the end Of his state
ment, most OF which we translate
below
"Aiter collecting a large num-
Der of minute details, ann now
able to present to the Astronomi-
cal Society an account of an i'm
mense cosmic cloud that covered
the whole OF Siberia during eleven
consecutive days oil the month OF
July, 1896. All the inhabitants Of
Siberian towns were astonished, at
this time. to find themselves en-
Yeloped in a thick smoke, contain
ing large quantity OF water vapor.
1t was generally believed that there
were enormous forest fires, but
dispatches from the government
officials showed that there were no
such fires anywhere. Besides,
they indicated that everywhere
was the same extraordinary smoke
over a territory 1000
kilometres [4,3oo miles in extent,
from Samara TO ChIta, and from
the Sayan Mountains to the Polar
circle. The whole Asiatic CONT.
nent was plunged for eleven days
IN thick smoke. The odor Of car
bon vas very evident and the suns
disc appeared like a red ball Of
fire; looked at it easily through
field glass without the least tear
for my sight. A perfect calm
Teigned in nature, but the upper
layers Of the smoke glided quite
rapidly over the suns disc, borne
by a northwest wind, Now, since
no forests were on ire anywhere,
and since there was no volcanic
eruption in northern Asia, and
since from Samara to Chita the
phenomenon presented every
where the same peculiarIties, we
must conclude, it seems to me,
that this was a cosmic phenome-
non. Could we have been passing,
for instance, through a gaseous
nebula or the tail of comet7 Ac-
cording to the stories of farmers,
whenever the grass was cut during
the smoky period, the hay seemed
to be poisoned. and the sheep that
ate it died by hundreds. A work.
man who was bleaching wax in
the sun found that, after the smoke
had disappeared, the wax was COM
pIetely red, and that it kept this
color even after being melted. A
civil engineer has recently pub
lished a notice on this phenome-
non in the Russian OBEetaI journal,
and he upholds the same hYpothe-
sis, namely, that we were passing
through a great cosmic cloud
whose origin has not yet been ex-
planned"
M. Rzyszczewski tells US that
according to the estimony OF trav-
ellers, the smoke extended to the
tops Of the highest mountains-an
additional evidence that ii was not
due to terrestrial causes-for forest
FIRE smoke, according to him, lies
low, so that one can see over it
from a mountain peak. Travellers
were completely lost in the gloom,
and a white tent could not be seen
at a distance Of two hundred feet.
In closing, the writer says:-"Ii
the earth was then passing through
gaseous nebula, we must sup
pose that this nebula had for a vast
distance a plane boundary, and
thar, in turning, the earth plunged
Siberia into the cloud during the
dav while at night il emerged into
the clear space; tor the nights were
fine, all the stars were visible, and
there v as not the least cloud or
smoke. But scarcely had the day
dawned when the dense smoke re-
turned" The proof, OF course,
would be quite conclusive il it
could be shown that on the oppo-
site side Of the globe, at the same
time, the nights were smoky and
the days clear; but no evidence of
this kind has apparently been
sought.