Miscellanies, 



381 



of comets usually are, it will represent a nebulous body, so situated 

 that portions may fall from it to the earth; even at midnight- They 

 would not, indeed, be directed towards the center of the earth ; nor 

 were the meteors ; but their direction was probably the resultant of 

 the force of gravity, and the relative motion occasioned by the ex- 

 cess of the earth's motion above that of the body. The reader will 

 please to remark, that the source of the meteors was not between 

 the earth and the sun, but nearly ninety degrees from that direction, 

 that is, nearly in the line of the tangent of the eai'th's orbit,*— a po- 

 sition which is necessarily assigned to it, because it was projected 

 towards a part of the heavens nearly ninety degrees from the sun. 



2. It has been said, that had the nebulous body been within two 

 thousand two hundred and thirty eight miles of the earth, (the com- 

 puted distance of the source of the meteors,) the whole body would 

 have fallen, even had it been twenty nine times as far oiF as this.f 

 It is quite compatible with my views of the extent of the body in 

 question, to suppose that the greatest part of it was more remote 

 than sixty five thousand miles, the limit assigned, and that all that 

 lay within that distance did actually fall to the earth. 



The above estimate of the distance, was made before I had any 

 conception of the true source of the meteors, and from very un- 

 satisfactory and discordant data, as was acknowledged at the time ;J 

 but on arriving at the conclusion that the meteors had their source 

 in a cometary body, (a conclusion which was formed after nearly 

 the whole of the article was in press,) it was immediately perceived 

 that the source of the meteors must be much farther off than the 

 previous calculations had fixed it, and it was so remarked at the 

 conclusion of that article. *§> 



Nor do I consider this procedure to be at all inconsistent with 

 the strict rules of inductive reasoning. We begin with collecting 

 and classifying our facts ; we then draw from each the most rational 

 conclusions we are able, without any reference to a general theory. 

 At length we unexpectedly discover the true cause on which all the 

 phenomena depend. We are now authorized to frame our theory, 

 and to go back and apply it to the correction of any subordinate es- 

 timates or inferences previously made, while we were ignorant of 



XXV i 



t Espy, Franklin Journal, Vol. xv. 

 t Vide Amer. Jour. Vol. xxvi, p. 145, 



Sibid. p. 173. 



