41 
with many. Have they been ejected from the sun itself? If so 
they would probably have fallen back again to it surface. Are 
they, again, connected with comets ? 
There is one notable circumstance in the history of astronomy 
that cannot, in connection with the subject, be overlooked. In 
1856 a comet (Biela’s) that had in. preceding revolutions round 
the sun undergone strange mutations, was anxiously looked for by 
astronomers. It never appeared at its appointed place, but the 
gazers who were searching for a glimpse of it were greeted with 
the radiant lines and points of thousands of shooting stars. The 
comet has never re-appeared, but the orbit of that swarm of mete- 
oric bodies is identical with the path of Biela’s comet. The ex- 
amination of the microscopic structure of these stony bodies, as I 
have already remarked, points to their condensation from a fiery 
vapour. In the coldness of space is the heated gaseous substance 
of a comet condensed into these nodules ? Are comets themselves 
but shreds of that nebulous matter which astronomers perceive in 
the depths of space and out of which systems perchance are 
formed? Was not the earth itself once but a huge meteor, pursu- 
ing its path round the sun ere yet that fragment was sundered 
from it which we now call the moon? Men sometimes speculate 
as to the nature of other worlds than this. Are not these the only 
embodied revelations we get of the unknown universe beyond us ? 
I hold in my hand one of the smallest of these voyagers through 
the depths of space that has found its way to our globe. 
“Nature,” says a recent writer, “knows nothing of great or small. 
These are but relative terms. When I hold one of these tiny 
meteorites between my fingers I grasp, in fact, a planet.” 
