2. Dr. L. N. G. Filon on Comets : 
It is also known as the comet of the ‘‘Comet Year.’’ The 
summer of that year was exceedingly hot, and the wine of the 
‘**Comet Year” long enjoyed a great reputation. 
The origin and nature of comets were (and to some extent 
still are) the cause of much speculation. 
The reason why comets were regarded with so much fear was 
the irregularity of their appearance and disappearance. Like 
the sun, moon, and planets, they moved among the stars; but, 
unlike them, they did not return at periodic intervals, or follow 
regular courses. 
() AY?) can 
Fic. 1.—ELuietTic AND PaRABoLic ORBITS 
TOUCHING AT PERIHELION. 
At first sight, therefore, it appeared that they might have no 
connection with the celestial bodies, and the old Greek philo- 
sophers, among them Aristotle, believed that they were earthly 
phenomena, meteors of the upper air, much as we now look upon 
the Aurora Borealis. 
Tycho Brahe, who lived at Prague, in Hungary, in the six- 
teenth century, was the first to show, by actual observation, that 
they were more distant than the moon. This he did by com- 
paring the apparent positions of the comet as seen from stations 
