TRANSACTIONS 
OF 
THE CROYDON NATURAL HISTORY AND 
SCIENTIFIC SOCIETY. 
1903—1904. 
1.—Comets: THEIR APPEARANCE, NatuRE, AND ORIGIN. 
By L. N. G. Frton, M.A., D.Se. 
(Being Notes of a Lecture delivered April 21st, 1903.) 
Wen our ancestors looked up at the heavens, they were occa- 
sionaliy startled by the appearance of extraordinary objects, con- 
sisting of a bright head and nucleus, followed by a huge luminous 
streamer or ‘‘ tail.” It was this tail which impressed most the 
early observers. The Greeks compared them to streaming hairs; 
hence the name of ‘‘ comets,” or hairy stars, given to these 
objects. 
These trails of fire, which stretched across the sky for months 
at a time, were considered, until comparatively recent times, ag 
dreadful portents, which boded evil to nations and princes. 
Comets were seen at the time of Cmsar’s death, and the Latin 
poet Vergil refers to them as “ diri comete,” terrible comets. 
A comet was seen in 1066, the year of the battle of Hastings, 
but, this time, the Norman chroniclers enlisted the comet as 
their ally, and it is pictured on the Bayeux tapestry as an omen 
favourable to William the Conqueror. 
The tale even runs that a Pope, Calixtus III., went so far as 
to excommunicate the comet of 1455. 
Even in the nineteenth century, something of superstitious 
awe still clung to comets. Thus the celebrated comet of 1811 
was supposed to be connected with the downfall of Napoleon; it 
passed perihelion on the day when the Russians burnt Moscow. 
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