182 Scientific JntelligencC'-^Astronomy. 



ever be disarranged, so as to intersect it ? There was nothing 

 but what was very just in these remarks. Time has confirmed 

 them^ since the orbit of the comet of six years and three quar- 

 ters passes so near that of the earth, that the smallest distur- 

 bance might cause their intersection. But before a disaster could 

 happen, it would not only be necessary that the orbits should 

 meet, but also that the bodies themselves should happen to be 

 at the point of intersection, and the probabilities of such a con- 

 currence are infinitely small. This was M. Lalande's opinion. 

 He drew up a memoir on the subject for a public meeting of the 

 4cademy ; but, happening to be last in the order of readers, the 

 time passed away, and it was not read. The title Reflexions sur 

 les cometes qui peuvent approches de la terre, announced a sub- 

 ject calculated to interest the greater number of hearers. It was 

 asked. What the memoir contained ? and the answer was, that it 

 contained an account of the effects which a comet striking the 

 earth might produce. A noise went abroad that the comet was 

 to come, and that it was predicted by Lalande. Maupertuis, in 

 his letters on the same subject, spoke ^in a much more positive 

 and terrifying manner, and yet nobody took notice of them ; but 

 Maupertuis was not positively known as an astronomer ; he had 

 not made almanacks ; he had not the power of inserting in the 

 journals accounts of all the astronomical phenomena. The alarm 

 excited by this alleged prediction was so general, that the lieu- 

 tenant of police wished to see the memoir ; he found nothing in 

 it to authorise the terrors that had arisen, and ordered its speedy 

 publication. When it was printed, nobody would believe it. 

 It was pretended that the author had suppressed the fatal pre- 

 diction, not to terrify by the announcement of a catastrophe from 

 which he had no means of withdrawing himself. The same ter- 

 rors were renewed at various epochs, but with less violence, and 

 the blame was always laid upon Lalande, who had not said a 

 single word on the subject. At the present day, comets are not 

 so general an object of terror. In proportion as the mass of the 

 population becomes more enlightened, superstitious terrors of ail 

 kinds are less to be dreaded. The conjunctions of the planets, 

 which were formerly the cause of much more violent, and still 

 more unreasonable fears ; and eclipses, which so long divided 

 jyith comets the right of terrifying the nations of the earth, have 



