prevalent Disorders, fyc, with Volcanic Emanations. 4S1 



ideas (in art. 626.), Professor Olmsted can gain no aid in the 

 manufacture of a comet from the zodiacal light, unless he 

 intends to assert that the meteors result from the collection 

 and condensation of the matter acquired by the medium 

 which resists comets, from millions of other comets, and which 

 they cannot again attract : but this would be to reduce the 

 imaginary comet to the rank of receiver of stolen goods, and 

 refute its claims to individuality. Again, has it been shown 

 that there has been any diminution of the tail of the imaginary 

 comet, either by a decrease in the extension of the zodiacal light, 

 from what it always has been, or in the existence of meteors 

 within the last few years ? Or, rather, does not the fact stated 

 above (in art. 487.) contradict at once the possibility of the 

 supposed comet existing except after its own fashion, and as 

 a being eccentrically eccentric ? 



Could we believe that a comet had any thing to do with 

 these meteors, we might almost venture to suppose that Biela's 

 would satisfy us ; for " its orbit, by a remarkable coincidence, 

 very nearly intersects that of the earth ; and had the latter, 

 at the time of its passage in 1832 *, been a month in advance 

 of its actual place, it would have passed through the comet; 

 a singular rencontre, perhaps not unattended with danger." 

 (HerschcVs Astronomy, Lardner's Cyclopaedia, xliii. p. 309. 

 art. 484.) 



Unfortunately, however, Biela's comet has no tail, and no 

 appearance of a solid nucleus (therefore, no pyrotechnic 

 establishment within it), and its period is 6j years, nearly four- 

 teen times the period of Olmsted's comet; moreover, though 

 it did appear in 1832, it did not in 1831, 1833, 1834, or 1799: 

 its next appearance is to be in 1838 ; perhaps we shall know 

 more about it then. 



Stanley Green, near Poole, Dorsetshire, MayS. 1835. 



P. S. — The above observations had been committed to the 

 press, when, by the kindness of the editor, I was favoured with 

 the Journal of the Franklin Institute of Pennsylvania for the first 

 four months of 1835 (vol. xv.). As those numbers contain a 

 criticism on Professor Olmsted's hypothesis of the new comet f, 

 I have deemed it more satisfactory to append here an abstract 



* It is curious that it should have passed its perihelion on Nov. 26., just 

 thirteen days after the meteors. ( See Conn, des Terns, 1830.) ELdley's 

 comet will pass its perihelion Nov. 7 — 27. 1835. 



-f- " Notes of an Observer. Remarks on Professor Olmsted's Theory of 

 the Meteoric Phenomena of November 12. 1833, denominated Shooting 

 Stars, with some Queries towards forming a just Theory. By James P. 

 Espy." 



