Chapter IV: Front Matter (4)

_Trades and Manufactures._—Let us next consider some trades and manufactures which have an injurious influence upon persons engaged in them, and to a certain extent upon the community at large. The injurious effects are owing to solid particles and offensive gases which are given out into the air. The result of inhaling air more or less charged with solid particles may be easily explained. When the latter reach the entrance to the windpipe they at once set up irritation in the delicate lining membrane, and nature tries to repel the intruders by the involuntary cough which results. Should this fit of coughing fail in doing so, a quantity of glairy fluid is poured out from small glands in the windpipe, and this fluid enveloping the solid particles tends to prevent them from doing further mischief. Should they, however find their way lower down into the air passages, nature has provided a very beautiful mechanism for their expulsion. The entire lining membrane of these passages is covered with innumerable minute hairs, or “cilia” as they are called, which, by constantly waving in an upward direction toward the mouth, tend to carry the solid particles, and the glairy secretion which they have provoked, away from the lungs, and so out of harm’s way. This wonderful provision of nature is sufficient for the purpose, provided the strain be not too prolonged; but when the supply of irritating particles is constant, or nearly so, the nerves and muscles involved in this mechanism become exhausted and cease to perform this process of expulsion. The irritating particles are now no longer removed from the delicate membrane of the air passages upon which they lodge, this membrane becomes inflamed, and bronchitis or asthma is the result. But this inflammation, at first only affecting the superficial membrane, may sink into the deeper tissues and affect the lung itself, in which case the original attack of bronchitis frequently merges into a condition of a consumptive nature. This will explain why many trades are injurious in which the danger to health is due to the fine dust floating continually in the air of the premises. For example, the particles of coal dust in the air of mines, and the smoke from factory chimneys; particles of steel and grit given off in grinding; organic dust or fluff in shoddy and flax mills; the dust in potteries, china works, pearl button manufactories, in polishing and cement works, in brass works, in marble and steel polishing works of various sorts, especially where emery is used; in all of these cases the solid particles are inhaled and tend to produce disease in the lungs and air passages. Moreover, the severity of the effects is chiefly dependent on the amount of dust, and on the physical conditions as to angularity, roughness or smoothness of the particles, rather than on the nature of the substance, except in some specific cases. The habitual inhalation of coal dust in the air of coal mines very frequently results in consumption, and the fine divisions of the lung become so blocked up by the particles of coal that the term “black lung” has been applied to the appearance presented by the lung after death. It has been found that the death rate from consumption among miners who work in mines where the air is changed rapidly, is very much less than among miners who work in mines that are badly ventilated. Of all unhealthy occupations that of steel-grinding is the most fatal. Steel-grinding is divided into the dry, wet, and mixed methods; and the injurious effects vary according to the amount of water used on the stone. Forks, needles, etc., are ground on the dry stone, and accordingly the men and boys employed at this kind of work are found to be the greatest sufferers. Dr. Hall, of Sheffield, has furnished important information as to the average duration of life among the artisans in steel, which he found to be as follows, viz.: dry grinders of forks, 29 years; razors, 31 years; scissors, 32 years; edge-tool and wool-shears, 32 years; spring-knives, 35 years; files, 35 years; saws, 38 years; sickles, 38 years. In this and many other similarly injurious trades various methods have from time to time been devised, more especially of late years, whereby the dust might be prevented from entering the air-passages, such as fans for blowing it away, and respirators of various kinds to filter the air as it is being breathed; but it has been found that workmen themselves frequently object to any innovation which appears to them to interfere with their more immediate comfort. There are some trades where the dust given off acts not only as a mechanical irritant when breathed, but where the substance thus inhaled acts as a direct poison. For instance, manufacturers of white lead and other mineral paints frequently exhibit symptoms of poisoning in this way, and workmen who use arsenical compounds, as in the making of wall papers, artificial flowers, etc., are often the victims of poisoning by arsenic. This poisoning by means of arsenical wall papers deserves more than a passing notice, owing to the dangerous and even fatal effects which they induce, not only in the workmen who prepare them, but also in persons inhabiting apartments where the walls are covered by them. These wall papers are mostly of a beautiful green color, the latter being due to a paint composed of arsenic and copper. Owing to variations of heat and moisture the green particles are constantly being set free from the paper and carried about the room by ventilation. Some idea of the amount of poison with which so many people are surrounded in their rooms may be formed if we consider that this green pigment contains fifty-nine per cent of arsenic, and that a square foot of one of these wall papers contains on an average more than sufficient arsenic to poison twelve persons. In addition to the cases which most physicians are now so familiar with, where dangerous symptoms of poisoning have been traced to this cause, it is much to be feared that insidious and chronic disease is too often due to this practice of covering the walls of our sitting-rooms, and more especially our bedrooms, with arsenic. It may be remembered, however, that a wall paper may be green and yet not contain any arsenic, so that the following simple method of detecting an arsenical paper may be useful. If a camel-hair brush be dipped in an ordinary solution of ammonia, and applied to the green portions of the suspected paper, the green will be rapidly changed to an azure blue color if arsenic be present. Some such simple test is all the more important, because green papers, “warranted free from arsenic,” have been found to contain a large percentage of that poison.

In addition to the sources of pollution of the atmosphere which we have been considering, there are various trades and manufactures in which poisonous matters are given off. Some of these are of an organic nature, as in the melting of fats, in the making of size and glue, in the boiling of oil, in the boiling of bones, and in many other processes carried out on a considerable scale, where the emanations are highly offensive and often of unknown chemical composition. Gas works must be included in this poisonous group, owing to the accidental escape of gas, sometimes in large quantity. In lime kilns enormous volumes of carbonic acid gas are poured out, both from the limestone burnt and from the fuel employed, and in this way persons living in the immediate neighborhood have been suffocated. In chloride of lime (bleaching powder) manufactories, and in places where it is used for bleaching wool and other materials, chlorine gas is given off into the air, causing when inhaled a great amount of irritation in the air passages. Moreover, this chlorine vapor is often carried in the air for long distances. In other branches of industry the workers are exposed to the vapors of sulphurous acid and muriatic acid, both of these being very irritating, and giving rise to various diseases of the lungs and eyes.

Such, then, are a few of the impurities, more or less poisonous, to be met with in the air we breathe; and dangerous to health as all of them are, it must be admitted that they do far less mischief to the public health than the continual mismanagement of our atmospheric food, common in all classes of society, by which it is rendered unfit to support a healthy life. The two ways in which air may be rendered thus comparatively valueless are either by excluding it too much from our dwellings, and this is the fault of the rich, or by crowding too many people together in small rooms, and this is the fault of the poor. In the houses of the better classes the air is kept out by closed windows, doors, curtains, and even in some places by putting screens before the fire-places in summer, and in bedrooms in winter when fire is not used.

Pure air is, in fact, the most important of all health factors. When it is breathed freely, plentifully, and continually, there are few diseases which it will not enable the body to resist. Nay, even some injuries, which, received by the denizens of the overcrowded city, would be speedily followed by death, will be readily recovered from by the agricultural laborer or country farmer, who, always breathing a pure atmosphere, has thus stored up a great amount of additional constitutional force.—_Good Words._

MANNER.

By LORD CHESTERFIELD to his Son.

I fear and suspect, that you have taken it into your head in most cases, that the matter is all, and the manner little or nothing. If you have, undeceive yourself, and be convinced that, in everything, the manner is full as important as the matter. If you speak the sense of an angel in bad words and with a disagreeable utterance, nobody will hear you twice, who can help it. If you write epistles as well as Cicero, but in a very bad hand, and very ill-spelled, whoever receives will laugh at them; and if you had the figure of Adonis, with an awkward air and motions, it will disgust, instead of pleasing. Study manner, therefore, in everything, if you would be anything.

UNPREPOSSESSING MANNERS.

This epigram in Martial,

Non amo te, Sabidi, nec possum dicere quare;
Hoc tantum possum dicere, non amo te;

has puzzled a great many people, who can not conceive how it is possible to love any body, and yet not know the reason why. I think I conceive Martial’s meaning very clearly, though the nature of the epigram, which is to be short, would not allow him to explain it more fully; and I take it to be this: O Sabidis, you are a very worthy, deserving man; you have a thousand good qualities, you have a great deal of learning; I esteem, I respect, but for the soul of me I can not love you, though I can not particularly say why. You are not _amiable_; you have not those engaging manners, those pleasing attentions, those graces, and that address, which are absolutely necessary to please, though impossible to define. I can not say it is this or that particular thing that hinders me from loving you; it is the whole together; and upon the whole you are not agreeable.

How often have I, in the course of my life, found myself in this situation, with regard to many of my acquaintance, whom I have honored and respected, without being able to love. I did not know why, because, when one is young, one does not take the trouble, nor allow one’s self the time, to analyze one’s sentiments, and to trace them up to their source. But subsequent observation and reflections have taught me why. There is a man, whose moral character, deep learning, and superior parts, I acknowledge, admire, and respect; but whom it is so impossible for me to love, that I am almost in a fever whenever I am in his company. His figure (without being deformed) seems made to disgrace or ridicule the common structure of the human body. His legs and arms are never in the position which, according to the situation of the body, they ought to be in, but constantly employed in committing acts of hostility upon the graces. He throws any where, but down his throat, whatever he means to drink, and only mangles what he means to carve. Inattentive to all the regards of social life, he mistimes or misplaces everything. He disputes with heat, and indiscriminately, mindless of the rank, character, and situation of those with whom he disputes; absolutely ignorant of the several gradations of familiarity or respect, he is exactly the same to his superiors, his equals, and his inferiors; and therefore, by a necessary consequence, absurd to two of the three. Is it possible to love such a man? No. The utmost I can do for him is to consider him as a respectable Hottentot.

METHOD.

Despatch is the soul of business; and nothing contributes more to despatch than method. Lay down a method for everything, and stick to it inviolably, as far as unexpected incidents may allow. Fix one certain hour and day in the week for your accounts, and keep them together in their proper order; by which means they will require little time, and you can never be much cheated. Whatever letters and papers you keep, docket and tie them up in their respective classes, so that you may instantly have recourse to any one. Lay down a method also for your reading, for which you allot a certain share of your mornings; let it be in a consistent and consecutive course and not in that desultory and immethodical manner, in which many people read scraps of different authors upon different subjects. Keep a useful and short common-place book of what you read, to help your memory only, and not for pedantic quotations. One method more I recommend to you, by which I have found great benefit, even in the most dissipated part of my life; that is, to rise early, and at the same hour every morning, how late soever you may have sat up the night before. This secures you an hour or two, at least, of reading or reflection, before the common interruptions of the morning begin; and it will save your constitution, by forcing you to go to bed early, at least one night in three.

You will say, it may be, as many young people would, that all this order and method is very troublesome, only fit for dull people, and a disagreeable restraint upon the noble spirit and fire of youth. I deny it; and assert, on the contrary, that it will procure you both more time and more taste for your pleasures; and so far from being troublesome to you, that, after you have pursued it a month, it would be troublesome to you to lay it aside. Business whets the appetite, and gives a taste to pleasures, as exercise does to food; and business can never be done without method; it raises the spirits for pleasures; and an assembly will much more sensibly affect a man who has employed, than a man who has lost, the preceding part of the day; nay, I will venture to say, that a fine lady will seem to have more charms to a man of study or business, than to a saunterer. The same listlessness runs through his whole conduct, and he is as insipid in his pleasures as inefficient in everything else.

ON THE KNEELING FIGURE IN MALVERN PRIORY.

By CHARLES GRINDROD.

[The old Renaissance figure (of a lady) is placed just
outside the altar rail; looking northward, with one
side of the face turned to the west, the other to the
altar. Although kneeling, it has at a little distance the
appearance of standing, owing to its peculiar erectness
from the knees upward. The face is remarkable for the
singular smile, half cynical, half spiritual (especially in
the tightly compressed lips), which gives an expression of
_living_ interest.]

Tenant of stone! here still thou worshippest,
Smiling the prayer that on thy lips has hung
While ages traveled. Still thou kneel’st among
The quiet tombs. Impassioned joy or spleen
Moves not thy face—in part to heaven addressed,
In part to the green hills thy feet have clomb.
Image of what is past, and what shall come!
Silent as death, which thou embodiest
Far more than life. Mute sentry! stood between
The crumbled mortal and ascended sprite!
Has thou no sense for what is, or has been?
Can nothing break thy sepulchre of rest?
Once thy heart throbbed with human motion keen,
Thy folded hands with others warmly pressed,
Thy close-sealed lips have sweetly spoke or sung—
Now an eternity is not more dumb!
The organ peels around thee its deep notes;
But thou art deaf to music’s noblest strains.
A glory of rich hues about thee floats;
Thou car’st not for the splendor of bright panes.
What fateful storms and changes hast thou seen!
How little dost thou heed the mad world’s hum!
Our childhood knew thee as doth now our age—
Time stirs not thee. Where art thou all this space,
The part of thee which not in stone remains,
While wondering centuries roll past thy place?
They change and cease: the whole world turns a page—
But thou still wear’st that smile upon thy face.

COMETS.

By RICHARD A. PROCTOR.

During the last two years several comets—some telescopic, others visible to the naked eye, and even conspicuous objects in the heavens—have been observed, not only by the older methods, but by some which have only been available within recent years. It is naturally expected, therefore, by the general public that some new light should be thrown on these mysterious objects, whose phenomena still remain among the unexplained, seemingly the inexplicable problems of the celestial depths.

We propose to consider here what has thus been learned, and what also (unfortunately it is much more) remains still to be learned, respecting comets. But first it will be well to show what are the special phenomena which present themselves for explanation.

A comet apparently comes out from the remote depths of space in a condition of comparative calm. It appears as a small round nebulous object, looking like a tiny cloud of extreme tenuity—the idea of tenuity being suggested by the exceeding faintness of the comet’s light. This cloud appears somewhat condensed toward the middle. As the comet draws nearer to the sun, it usually grows somewhat long in the direction of the sun; and before long a portion within the part nearest the sun is seen to be brighter than the rest, and to have a more or less defined outline. This is the _nucleus_—sometimes seen as a dull disc of nearly uniform brightness, at others as a mere bright point not unlike a star. The fainter light around this is the _coma_, or hair, which resembles a luminous fog round the nucleus, usually brighter on the side toward the sun, and on the other side growing fainter and fainter till it can no longer be seen. Later this lengthening of the comet in directions toward and from the sun becomes more marked, until at length the comet may fairly be said to have a head directed toward the sun and a tail directed from him. Nucleus, coma, and tail may be very different in appearance in different comets, and in particular the tail may be more or less complicated in structure, being sometimes a mere straight streak, at others twofold, multiple, curved, with thwart streaks, and so forth—no two comets, in fine, having tails resembling each other except in general details.

Dr. Huggins, in a rather disappointing article on comets, recently communicated to a contemporary, remarks that the nucleus, though an apparently insignificant speck, “is truly the heart and kernel of the whole thing—potentially it is the comet.” This has scarcely yet been proved, though it appears exceedingly probable. It is true, however, as he adds, that this part only of the comet conforms rigorously to the laws of gravitation, and moves strictly in its orbit. “If we could see a great comet,” he proceeds, “during its distant wandering, when it has put off the gala trappings of perihelion excitement, it would appear as a very sober object, and consist of little more than nucleus alone.” This again seems probable, though it has never yet been proved, and the division of some comets into two or more parts, each having coma, nucleus, and tail of its own, shows that the nucleus cannot be, in every case, what Dr. Huggins seems here to suggest. Dr. Huggins has done well in saying (though scarcely with sufficient emphasis, considering how often the mistake is repeated) that “though many telescopic comets are of extremely small mass, nucleus included—so small, indeed, that they are unable to perturb such small bodies as Jupiter’s satellites—yet we should mistake greatly if we were to suppose that all comets are ‘airy nothings.’ In some large comets the nucleus may be a few hundred miles in diameter, or even very much larger, and may consist of solid matter. It is not necessary to say that the collision of a cometary nucleus of this order with the earth would produce destruction on a wide scale.”

It is even more necessary to correct the widely-spread misapprehension as to the relations between meteors and comets. We hear it stated that the nucleus of a comet is made up of meteoric stones (Professor P. G. Tait says—for unknown reasons—that they resemble “paving stones or even bricks”) as confidently as though the earth had at some time passed through the nucleus of a comet, and some of our streets were now paved with stones which had fallen to earth on such an occasion. As a matter of fact, all that has yet been proved is that meteoric bodies follow in the track (which is very different from the tail) of some known comets, and that probably all comets are followed by trains of meteors. These may have come out of the head or nucleus in some way as yet unexplained; but it is by no means certain that they have done so, and it is by many astronomers regarded as more than doubtful.

The most important points to be noticed in the behavior of large comets, as they approach the sun, is that usually the side of the coma which lies toward the sun is the scene of intense disturbance. Streams of luminous matter seem to rise continually toward the sun, attaining a certain distance from the head, when, assuming a cloud-like appearance, they seem to form an envelope around the nucleus. This envelope gradually increases its distance from the sun, growing fainter and larger, while within it the process is repeated, and a new envelope is formed. This in turn ascends from the nucleus, expanding as it does so, while within it a new envelope is formed. Meanwhile, the one first formed has grown fainter, perhaps has disappeared. But sometimes the process goes on so rapidly (a day or two sufficing for the formation of a complete new envelope) that several envelopes will be seen at the same time, the outermost faintest, the innermost most irregular in shape and most varied in brightness, while the envelope or envelopes between are the best developed and most regular.

The matter raised up in these envelopes seems to have undergone a certain change of character, causing it no longer to obey the sun’s attractive influence, but to experience a strong repulsive action from him, whereby it is apparently swept away with great rapidity to form the tail. “It flows past the nucleus,” says Dr. Huggins, “on all sides, still ever expanding and shooting backward until a tail is formed in a direction opposite to the sun. This tail is usually curved, though sometimes rays or extra tails sensibly straight are also seen.” The description is, however, incomplete in one important respect. The matter raised from the nucleus to form the envelopes may be, and probably is, carried past the nucleus on all sides; but the appearance presented by the tail just behind the nucleus is not exactly in accordance with our ideas as to what should result from the flowing past “on all sides.” There is a dark space immediately behind the nucleus, that is, where the nucleus, if solid, would throw its shadow, if there were matter to receive the light all around so that the shadow could be seen. Now it may be thought at first that this corresponds exactly with what should be seen: when we look just behind the nucleus there is no light, or very little; when we look on either side of that dark space there is the luminous matter which has been driven back from the envelopes in front of the nucleus. But if the luminous matter flows past the nucleus _on all sides_, it must flow past the nucleus on the side nearest to the observer, and also on the side farthest away; and it is just where the line of the sight passes through these two regions of brightness that a dark streak is seen just behind the nucleus. Let the reader draw two concentric circles—one an inch in diameter, the other two inches—and let him then draw two parallel tangents to the inner circle on opposite sides of it. Supposing now the space between the two circles to represent in section the luminous matter which flows all round the nucleus, while the surface of the inner circle represents the unilluminated part behind the nucleus, the two tangent lines will represent the lines of sight on either side of the dark region, where as we might expect, we get plenty of light; and we can also understand very well why outside of that the line of sight through the luminous matter (or the chords to our outer circle), getting shorter and shorter, the light of the luminous streaks bounding this part of the tail gets fainter and fainter; but if just inside either of the two tangents, chords are drawn parallel to them, crossing the inner circle, the parts of these chords which lie between the two circles are very nearly equal in length to the tangent lines themselves; and even a common diameter to both circles has, lying between them, two portions together equal to the radius of the outer. Hence, since the line of sight even across the middle of the space behind the nucleus, passes through a considerable range of luminous matter, while a line within but near the outskirts of that space passes through nearly as great a range of luminous matter as one just outside that space, there should be plenty of light where yet to the eye there seems to be something like absolute darkness. Either then the eye is greatly deceived, or else we must find some explanation of darkness existing where considerable brightness might be expected.[D]

The matter which forms the tail, seems, as I have said, to be swept off from the envelopes raised by the sun’s action on the nucleus. It seems as though the matter thus raised had undergone in some way a change of character, which caused it no longer to obey the law of gravity as it had done when forming part of the nucleus, but instead of yielding to the sun’s attraction, to submit rather to an intense repulsive action, carrying it at a much greater rate from the sun than, under the action of gravity—starting from rest and free from all perturbing influences—it could have been drawn toward him. Dr. Huggins thus words his account of what seems to happen: “Now is seen to take place a change which is most puzzling—namely, these envelopes of light appear to give up their substance under the influence of a strong repulsive force exerted from the sun, and to be forced backwards.” Sir John Herschel, after his long and careful study of the comet of 1830 (Halley’s at its second return) came to the conclusion that repulsive action exerted by the sun on the matter raised in these envelopes had been distinctly proved.

Yet here, where we seem to have our first firm ground for hypothesis respecting these mysterious objects—comets’ tails—we meet with stupendous difficulties. Consider, for instance, the phenomena presented by Newton’s comet. That comet had traversed the last ninety millions of miles of its approach toward the sun in four weeks. At the end of that time it passed out of view for a few days, having then a tail ninety millions of miles, at least, in length. Four days passed, and it reappeared on the other side of the sun—having in the interval traversed nearly a semi-circle—in reality, of course, the perihelion end of its long oval path. At its reappearance, it had a tail still ninety millions of miles in length, but the tail with which it reappeared had, of course, a direction entirely different from that of the tail which had been seen before—the two directions were inclined about one hundred and sixty degrees to each other. Now, as Sir John Herschel remarks, we can not look on the tail of a comet as something whirled round like a stick, as the comet circles round its perihelion sweep. The tail with which the comet reappeared must have been an entirely new formation. Nor can we doubt that if the comet had been watched as it swept around the sun, the changes in the tail’s position which had been observed to the time of disappearance, would have been observed to progress continuously, the tail passing by a uniform motion from the position it then had to that which it was observed to have at the time of reappearance. So that we may fairly suppose the tail with which the comet reappeared to have been formed in much less than the time during which the comet had been out of sight. Probably its farthest part had been formed in much less than a day, the part near the head being, of course, formed later. But if the matter repelled from the head was thus driven over a distance of ninety million miles in twenty-four hours, at the outside, the average velocity of its motion was about a thousand miles per second, or nearly three times as great as the greatest velocity which the sun _can_ communicate by his attractive energy to matter approaching him from without, even though such matter come to him from an almost infinite distance, and in a perfectly straight line—the conditions most favorable for giving a high rate of final velocity. Such velocity as the sun can thus give by his attractive energy is only given to matter which has been exposed a long time to his influence; but here, in the tail of the great comet of 1680, matter seems to have acquired almost instantaneously a velocity sufficing to carry it over ninety million miles with an average speed three times as great as the sun can thus, after long effort, communicate by means of his attractive power!

The difficulty is so great that many efforts—some bold and daring, others positively wild in the unscientific absurdity of their nature—have been made to overcome it.

Among the most ingenious of these is (or rather was, for I think it is no longer maintained even by its eminent author), Prof. Tyndall’s theory of a comet’s tail as an actinic cloud, generated by the passage of the solar rays through exceedingly tenuous matter after those rays had been in part deprived of their heating power, during their passage through the comet’s head. According to this theory the actinic cloud can not be formed under the heating rays, but so soon as the actinic rays fall on the tenuous matter alone, the cloud is formed,—so that all round the region in which would be the comet’s shadow, there is no luminous cloud, while along that region the cloud exists. The rapidity with which light travels would of course make this explanation absolutely perfect in explaining cometic tails lying always exactly in a straight line directed from the sun, or with their axis so situated. But unfortunately this exceedingly rapid formation of the tail (a tail of ninety million miles in length would be formed in about eight minutes) is more than observation requires or can explain. Prof. Tyndall made a slight oversight in dealing with this part of his theory. Noticing that the actinic cloud, as he called it, is not formed instantly, but after a delay of a few seconds, in his experiments, he reasoned as though it would follow from this that the formation of the actinic cloud behind a comet’s head in space might be a process extending its action in distance from the head at a rate considerably less than that at which light travels, yet still fast enough to account for the exceedingly rapid formation of the tail of Newton’s comet, and of other similar tails. But a little consideration will show that the few seconds following the fall of light on the vapors dealt with by Tyndall, before the luminous cloud appeared, would produce no such effect as he imagined. The rate of formation of the tail would still be that at which light travels. Imagine the head at A, for the sake of argument, and the sun’s light after reaching A, passing on to B, C, D, E, etc., to Z, a distance say of one hundred million miles, in nine minutes:

A ... B ... C ... D ... E ... ... Z.

Suppose that, when the light has reached the vaporous matter lying at B, an interval of one full minute (much greater than any noticed in Tyndall’s experiments), occurs before the actinic cloud comes into view, a similar interval after the light has passed C before the cloud is seen there, and so on, up to the time of the arrival of the light at Z. Professor Tyndall’s reasoning implied that all the time intervals thus occurring at B, C, D, E, etc., up to Z, had to be added together, to give the total time of the formation of the tail from A to Z, and hence naturally a long time might elapse, and the head having at the end of this time reached a different position from that which it had occupied at the beginning, the divergence of the tail from the direction exactly opposite to the sun, and the curvature of the tail, would be alike readily accounted for. But what are the actual facts of the case. The part of the tail formed latest by the supposed solar actinic action, namely, the part at Z, would be formed just nine minutes after the light had left A, and ten minutes after the part nearest to A had been formed (by the same light waves), for, nine minutes after leaving A, the light would be at Z, and a minute after each epoch (according to our supposition) the actinic cloud would be formed respectively at A and at Z. We get just the same interval—nine minutes—whether the actinic cloud appears immediately after light has traversed the vapour which is to form the cloud, or a minute after, or an hour after. In every case the tail would be formed outwards from A, at the rate at which light travels. This does not accord with the phenomena—in fact, the supposition that a tail could be formed at the rate at which light travels, will be found, on examination, to lead to many most manifest absurdities, which Professor Tyndall doubtless recognized when he sought escape from the supposition of such rapid tail formation, through the effects he attributed to the delayed appearance of the actinic cloud.

Another theory in explanation of the rapid formation of such a tail as that of Newton’s comet is worthy of far less notice. Professor Tyndall’s theory was based on an interesting physical fact, which he had himself discovered, and which was also manifestly akin in character to the formation of a comet’s tail. The one to be now noticed was suggested to a mathematician by a rather familiar phenomenon, the effects of which on his imagination he seems to have been never able to entirely overcome—at any rate no amount of evidence against the theory seems to counterbalance in his mind the notion once conceived that the theory might be true. (It is a way some theorists have.)

Professor Tait was once looking at a part of the sky which seemed clear. As he looked, a long streak rapidly formed, which presently disappeared (if I remember his original description aright) almost as rapidly as it had formed. At any rate, the appearance of the streak was rapid enough to remind him of what astronomers said about the rapid (apparent) development of comets’ tails. The phenomenon itself was easily explained. There had been a flight of seabirds, traveling after their wont in a widely extended layer, which when he began his observations had been looked at somewhat aslant, so that—the distance being too great for the birds to be seen individually—nothing of the flight could be discerned at all. But it is evident that in such a case a very slight movement on the part of each bird would suffice so to shift the position of the layer in which they were traveling, that it would be seen edgewise, and then the birds, being so situated that the range of sight toward any part of the layer passed athwart a great number of them, would of course be seen, not individually but as a cloud, or long straight streak, a side view in fact of the layer in which they were traveling. _Eureka!_ shouted Professor Tait; and presently announced to the world the marvelous theory that the rapid formation of comets’ tails may be accounted for on the same general principle. Astronomers have found that along the tracks of some comets (where the tails never lie, by the way, but that is a detail) are countless millions of meteoric bodies separately undiscernable (and never yet discerned as a cloud—another detail); therefore it follows that the tails of all comets are formed by movements of “brickbats and paving stones” in them (Professor Tait’s own description of meteors), after the manner of the seabirds he saw from Arthur’s Seat. Professor Thomson at the Edinburgh meeting of the British Association endorsed this theory with special reference to the value of the “seabird analogy” in explaining the phenomena of Newton’s comet. Dr. Huggins, who, as he does not claim to be a mathematician (or to speak more correctly, as his labors in physical research have not given him time for profound mathematical research), may be more readily excused, also speaks of the seabird theory as if it had some legitimate standing. “The tail, he conceives,” he says, referring to Dr. Tait, “to be a portion of the less dense part of the train illuminated by sunlight, and visible or invisible to us, according, not only to circumstances of density, illumination, and nearness, but also of tactic arrangement, as of a flock of birds under different conditions of perspective.” Of course, the theory is utterly untenable—by astronomers who know something of the actual facts, and have enough mathematics to consider simple geometrical relations. Bodies moving in a plane surface like birds, if they individually travel in the same plane, keep its position unchanged. But if they move individually at an angle to that plane (as they occasionally do), they change its position—the surface, however, in which they collectively are at any moment, still remaining plane. In such a case only could such a phenomenon as was observed by Professor Tait be seen. But in such a case the visibility of the streak formed by the flight of birds would last but a few minutes, for the same motion which had in a few minutes brought the streak into view would in the next few minutes take it out of view. During the short time that a flight is visible in this way, it has an unchanging position, or a scarcely changing one. If the tail of Newton’s comet had rapidly formed and as rapidly vanished, remaining, while visible, in an almost unchanging position, the “seabird analogy” might explain that particular phenomenon, however inadequate to explain multitudes of others. But the phenomena to be explained are entirely different. Leaving out of the question the varying position and length of the tail as it approached the sun, and after it left the sun’s neighborhood, all of which were entirely inconsistent with the seabird analogy, what we are called upon to explain is that a visible tail ninety millions of miles in length, seen in position 1A on one day, was seen three days later in position 3A (having manifestly in the meanwhile passed through all the intermediate positions, including 2A). If Professor Tait, profound mathematician though he be, though he may “differentiate and integrate like Harlequin,” can show how any flight of bodies, like or unlike seabirds, can accomplish such a feat as the above, appearing first to form a thin streak A1, and in less than four days a thin streak A3, each ninety millions of miles long, without _some_ of them having had to travel a distance nearly equal to the line 1 to 3—or some one hundred and fifty millions of miles long, instead of the trifling journeys he assigned them, he should take a rank above Newton and Laplace as a mathematician. But there is another feat, apparently equally difficult to him, which he might achieve very readily with great advantage to those non-mathematicians among astronomers whom his name—well deserved, too—as a mathematician has hitherto misled, and with not less advantage to his own reputation: he might frankly admit that the idea which occurred to him while watching those unfortunate seabirds, had not quite the value which at the moment he mistakenly attached to it, and has since _seemed_ to do.

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But apart from the consideration of theories such as those, either demonstrably untenable, though ingenious, like Professor Tyndall’s, or altogether and obviously untenable like Professor Tait’s, there are certain phenomena of comets’ tails which force upon us the belief that they are phenomena of repulsion, though the repulsive action is of a kind not yet known to physicists.

1. The curvature of all the cometic tails when not seen from a point in or near the place of their motion.

2. The existence of more tails than one to the same comet, the different tails being differently curved.

3. The phenomena of striations athwart the tail.

It is evident that all these phenomena are such as we might fairly expect if a comet’s tail is caused by the sun’s repulsive action on molecules, raised by his heating action on the head. The matter thus swept away would resemble smoke, driven upwards from the funnel of a moving steamer, and then swept in any given direction by a steady wind; we should see a curved train of such matter just as we see a curved streak of smoke. If the matter raised from the head is not all of one kind (and it is antecedently unlikely that it should be), there would be more than one trail of matter, if the sun’s repulsive action were different on these different kinds of matter. Lastly, the striations seen athwart the tail, as in the well known case of Donati’s great comet, would be explained, either as due to the observed pulsational manner in which the envelopes are raised (if matter were raised uniformly from the head there could be no formation of successive envelopes), or else as due to the carrying off into the main tail, where alone such striations are seen, of matter which, had it freed itself at the beginning, would have been swept off into the smaller tails, but being as it were entangled in the great outflow of matter forming the large tail, escapes later, and when it does, gets swept off at its own more rapid rate, and there forms a streak lying at an angle with the direction of the principal tail.

Bredichin has shown that where there are three tails to a comet, their forms correspond with the theory that the envelopes raised from the head are principally formed of hydrogen, carbon and iron, but this, which, if established, would be the most important physical discovery yet made respecting comets, seems open at present to considerable doubt, though confirmations seem to be given to it, in some respects, by the results of spectroscopic analysis.

To spectroscopic analysis we must in all probability look for such information respecting comets, as may hereafter enable us to understand their nature. On this point let us consider what is said by one who, if not the greatest living astronomical spectroscopist, is _facile princeps_ in this country—Dr. W. Huggins. First, however, we must consider the past of this method of research as applied to comets.

The first successful application of the spectroscope to comets was made by Donati in 1864—the light of the comet being then divided into three bright bands, whose position, however, was not exactly determined. In 1866 Dr. Huggins obtained two kinds of light from a telescopic comet, part of the comet’s light giving a continuous spectrum, probably reflected sunlight, the other a spectrum of three bands. In 1868 a comet was observed (Brorsen’s) with more success. Three bands were seen in the spectrum of the light from the comet’s head, and a comparison of these with measures of similar bright bands belonging to the spectra of various combinations of carbon, showed, or rather seemed to suggest, that “combinations of carbon might be present in the comet.”

“In conjunction with my friend, the late Dr. W. Allen
Miller,” says Dr. Huggins, “I confronted directly with the
spectroscope attached to the telescope, the comet’s light
with that from inductive sparks passing in olefiant gas.
The sensible identity of the two spectra left no doubt
of the essential oneness of the cometary stuff with the
gas composed of carbon and hydrogen that was employed for
comparison.” “Since that time,” proceeds Dr. Huggins, “the
light from some twenty comets has been examined by different
observers. The general close agreement in all cases,
notwithstanding some small divergences, of the bright bands
in the cometary light with those seen in the spectra of
hydrocarbons, justifies us fully in ascribing the original
light of these comets to matter which contains carbon in
combination with hydrogen.”

Last year photography was applied to this spectroscopic work. The spectrum of the brightest comet of that year was partly continuous, and on this continuous spectrum many of the well known Fraunhofer lines could be traced. This made it certain that part of the comet’s light was reflected sunlight; though Dr. Huggins considers also that a part of the continuous spectrum of every comet is due to inherent light. On this point some doubts may be permitted. It is one thing for special bands to show themselves, for some substances may become self-luminous under special conditions at very moderate temperatures; it is quite another thing that the solid parts of a comet’s substance should become incandescent. I venture to express my own belief that this can scarcely happen except in the case of comets which approach very near to the sun. Besides the continuous spectrum with dark lines, the photograph showed also a spectrum of bright lines.

“These lines,” says Dr. Huggins, “possessed extreme
interest, for there was certainly contained within this
hieroglyphic writing some new information. A discussion
of the position of these new lines showed them to be
undoubtedly the same lines which appear in certain compounds
of carbon. Not long before, Professors Liveing and Dewar had
found from their laboratory experiments that these lines are
only present when nitrogen is also present, and that they
indicate a nitrogen compound of carbon, namely—cyanogen.
Two other bright groups were also seen in the photograph,
confirming the presence of hydrogen, carbon, and nitrogen.”

It is worthy of notice that, only a few days later, Dr. H. Draper succeeded in obtaining a photograph of the same comet’s spectrum. It appeared to him to confirm Dr. Huggins’ statements, except only that the dark Fraunhofer lines were not visible—the photograph having probably been taken under less favorable conditions.

So far, then, it seems clear that comets shine in part by reflecting sunlight, partly with light of their own; the part of the cometic substance which certainly shines with its own light is gaseous, and this gas in most comets “contains carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen, possibly also oxygen, in the form of hydrocarbons, cyanogen, and possibly oxygen compounds of carbon.”

But the latest comet has brought with it fresh news. Its spectrum is not like that given by the comets we have been considering. The bright lines of sodium are seen in it, and also other bright lines and groups of lines, which have not yet been shown to be identical with any belonging to the hydrocarbon groups, but probably are so. Dr. Huggins’ photograph shows, he considers, “that the original light of the comet, which gives a continuous spectrum (he means that portion of the original light which does so), was too strong to allow of the Fraunhofer lines being recognized in the reflected solar light.” We demur to this as being _shown_, it may fairly be said to be _suggested_. The cyanogen groups are not seen.

Such is Dr. Huggins’ account; but it is manifest that this comet underwent important changes, of which—we are surprised to note—Dr. Huggins has taken no account. Thus, in April, Professors Tacchini and Vogel found simply a faint continuous spectrum. In May, Vogel found that the three bands associated with carbon were present, though faint, while there was no trace of the sodium band. On the contrary, on the nights of June 4, 5, and 7, Dr. B. Hasselberg, of the Observatory of Pulkowa, found that the nucleus of the comet gave a very strong and extended continuous spectrum, with an “excessively strong” bright line in the orange yellow, proved by micrometrical measurement to be identical with the D line—the well known double sodium line of the solar spectrum. The observation was confirmed by Dunér, Bredichin, and Vogel. On this Mr. Hind remarks, “It is necessary to conclude that, during the last fortnight of May, the spectrum of Wells’ comet had changed in a manner of which the history of science furnishes no precedent.” It must, however, be remembered that as yet no comets have been examined under sufficiently favorable conditions, to enable us to say whether the change thus observed was really exceptional, or only exceptional in being for the first time noted. Whenever such a comet as Donati’s comes favorably under spectroscopic scrutiny, we shall probably learn something about these changes which will throw more light than anything yet discovered on the physical economy of these mysterious bodies.

What, then, do we know certainly respecting comets? What may we surmise with more or less probability? And in what direction may we look with most hope for future information? We know certainly that, in whatever way they are formed, the sun excites intense disturbance in them as they approach him. Prof. Stokes remarks that these effects, so much greater at a first view than we might fairly expect in the case of many of the comets observed, which have approached the sun no nearer than our own earth does, or not so near, may be accounted for by the circumstance that comets travel in what may be regarded as, to all intents and purposes, a vacuum. From Dr. Crooke’s experiments on very high vacua, we may infer that there is very little loss of heat, except by radiation. Thus the heat received by the meteoric components of a comet would be much greater than might otherwise be expected. Dr. Huggins mentions, in the same connection, the remarkable persistence of the bright trains of meteors in the rare upper air, which sometimes remain visible for three-quarters of an hour before the light fades, as the heat is gradually radiated away. “Our reasoning on these points,” he remarks, in his dry way, “would undergo considerable modification if we accept the views as to the condition of interplanetary space and of the sun’s action which have been recently suggested by Dr. Siemens in his solar theory”—but of course we do not.

Bredichin’s researches, showing that three distinct curvatures in comets’ tails correspond to the winnowing out by solar repulsive action of (1) hydrogen, (2) carbon, and (3) iron, seem worthy of careful study and investigation. It accords well with spectroscopic evidence as to the condition of the matter raised in gaseous form from the nucleus; and if as yet we have had no direct spectroscopic evidence of the existence of iron in comets, we know that meteors are closely connected with comets, and that many meteors contain iron. Moreover, as unexpected spectroscopic evidence of the presence of the substance sodium, common in so many meteors, has been found in the case of one comet, we may fairly hope that under yet more favorable conditions, the presence of iron also may be recognized in the same way.