Manchester Memoirs, Vol, Iv. (1910), No. \. 7 



meteors, as instanced in the comets of Tempel and of 

 Biela in relation to the November meteors, clearly point 

 to the conclusion that the place of origin of these erratic 

 bodies is within the confines of the solar system, and that 

 they have, consequently, always been members of it. 

 Moreover, all meteoric bodies, as is well known, are 

 mechanical mixtures of elementary substances or their 

 compounds, and further indicate them as the ejectamenta 

 of planetary bodies. 



That comets are planetary ejectamenta, principally 

 from the larger planets, may be justly inferred from the 

 prodigious force manifested by the ejections from other 

 celestial bodies to which attention has already been 

 directed. 



The determining cause of the ejection of a comet from 

 any planet would be found in the conjunctive attractions 

 of one or more of their number acting upon that part of 

 the surface from which the cometary matter was ejected. 

 The orbital direction of a comet would be determined 

 solely by the position of the breach in the crust in relation 

 to the orbital motion at the moment of discharge. The 

 motion would be direct when its discharge coincided with 

 the orbital motion of the planet, and retrograde when it 

 was in the opposite direction, as shown in the annexed 

 plate. And, according as the discharge was more or less 

 at right angles to the plane of the planetary orbit, so would 

 the angular direction of the comet in relation to the 

 ecliptic be determined. The discharge of cometary bodies 

 from vents in high planetary latitudes would necessarily 

 have the greatest inclination to the ecliptic. It may be 

 observed in this connexion that some of the large craters 

 on the moon's surface, and of the terrestrial active 

 volcanoes, Hecla and Mount Erebus, are also in high 

 latitudes. 



