41KS 



COMETS. 



even artificially. This assertion rests upon the 

 following fact. In 1770, there was an English ves- 

 sel at Wydah, called the Unity, which was loaded 

 with three hundred negroes. The small pox having 

 appeared among some of them, the owner determined 

 to inoculate the rest. All who were thus operated 

 upon, before the Hurmattan begun to blow, took the 

 infection. Seventy were inoculated the second day 

 after that wind began to blow, and not one of these 

 had the disease, or the least eruption. However, 

 some weeks afterwards, when the Harmattan no 

 longer blew, these very persons took the disorder. 

 It is also added, that during the second appearance 

 of the malady, the Harmattan began to blow again, 

 and sixty-nine slaves, who had it, all recovered. 

 The country over which this remarkable wind 

 - before it reaches the coast, is for two hundred 

 and forty miles composed of verdant plains, entirely 

 open, some woods of small extent, and here and 

 there a few rivers and inconsiderable lakes." 



Other disasters, and indeed all sorts of malign in- 

 fluences, have been attributed to comets by authors 

 every way entitled to respect ; and this has been 

 done without taking the trouble to assign any de- 

 finite cause for effects of so various a character, or 

 to point out any connection whatever, depending 

 upon the known laws of the world we live in. 

 Mr Arago espouses the cause of comets, and main- 

 tains their innocence. 



" An English physician," he says, " whose name 

 is not unknown to philosophers, Mr T. Forster, 

 has lately treated particularly of this subject. Ac- 

 cording to him, ' It is certain, that ever since the 

 Cliristiiin era, the most unhealthy periods are pre- 

 cisely those in which some great comet has ap- 

 peared ; that the approach of these bodies to our 

 earth has always been accompanied by earthquakes, 

 eruptions of volcanoes, and atmospheric commo- 

 tions ; whereas, no comet has ever been seen during 

 the salubrious periods.' Those who will take the 

 pains to examine critically the long catalogue, given 

 by Mr Forster, will not, I am sure, be led to the 

 same conclusions. The whole number of comets 

 mentioned by historians, reckoning from the begin- 

 ning of the Christian era to the present time, is 

 about five hundred. At the present time, when 

 the heavens are examined attentively and skilfully, 

 when comets that can be seen only by the aid of 

 the telescope are no longer overlooked, the aver- 

 age number of these bodies is more than two for 

 each year. If we agree with Mr Forster, that 

 their influence begins before they are visible, and 

 continues some time after, we shall never be with- 

 out a comet to account for every phenomenon, mis- 

 fortune, or epidemic that can occur. This remark 

 is applicable also to the memoirs of the celebrated 

 Sydenham, who was an advocate for the influence 

 of comets ; to the dissertations of Lubinietski, &c. 

 Mr Forster has moreover, I ought to say, so ex- 

 tended, in his learned catalogue, the influences of 

 comets, that it would seem there is scarcely a phe- 

 nomenon which is not to be ascribed to them. 

 Hot and cold seasons, tempests, hurricanes, earth- 

 quakes, volcanic eruptions, violent hail-storms, 

 great falls of snow, heavy rains, overflowings of 

 rirers, droughts, famines, thick fogs, flies, grass- 

 hoppers, plague, dysentery, contagious diseases 

 ;nnong animals, &c., are all registered by Mr For- 

 ster, as consequences of the appearance of some 

 comet, whatever may be the continent, the king- 

 dom, the town, or the village so visited. By thus 

 making out for earn year a complete catalogue of 



all the miseries of this lower world, any one mi^-lit 

 foresee that a comet would never appioach tlie 

 earth, without finding a part of its inhabitants suf- 

 fering under some calamity or other. By a strange 

 accident, well worthy of remark, the year 1680, 

 the year of the most brilliant of modern comets, 

 the year of its passage so near the earth, is that 

 which has furnished our author with the fewest 

 phenomena. Let us see what is to be found under 

 this date? " A cold winter, followed by a hot and 

 dry summer ; meteors in Germany." As to maladies, 

 we find no record whatever 1 How then, with such 

 a fact as this before us, can we attach any import- 

 ance to the accidental coincidences noted in other 

 parts of this table ? How are we to regard tliis 

 celebrated comet of 1680, which, blowing now hot 

 and now cold, increased the frosts of winter, and 

 the heat of summer? In 1665, the city of London 

 was ravaged by the plague. If, with Mr Forster, 

 we attribute this to the remarkable comet which 

 appeared the same year, in the month of April, how 

 are we to explain why the same pestilence did not 

 extend to Paris, to Holland, to any of the nume- 

 rous town in England except the capital ? This 

 difficulty must be met ; and until it is done away, 

 we shall expose ourselves to the ridicule of every 

 man of sense, if we attempt to make comets the 

 messengers of evil. Let us now see which are the 

 comets whose tails may have mingled with the 

 earth's atmosphere ; and then search the histories 

 and chronicles of the same period, to discover 

 whether, at the same time, there were not mani- 

 fested, in all parts of the earth at once, unusual 

 phenomena. Science may take note of such re- 

 searches; though, to tell the truth, the extreme 

 rarity of the matter which composes the tail, would 

 lead one to expect nothing but negative results; 

 but when an author appends to the date of a comet, 

 like that of 1668, the remark that all the cats in 

 Westphalia were sick; and to the date of another, 

 that of 1746, the circumstance, very little analo- 

 gous to the former to be sure, that an earthquake 

 destroyed in Peru the towns of Lima and Callao ; 

 when he adds that, during the appearance of a third 

 comet, a meteoric stone fell in Scotland, into a high 

 tower and broke the wheels of a clock ; that, dur- 

 ing the winter, wild pigeons appeared in large flocks 

 in America ; or still more, that, JEtna or Vesuvius 

 threw out torrents of lava, we must consider him 

 as displaying his learning to little purpose. If, in ' 

 thus registering contemporary events, he thinks he 

 has established some new relations between them, 

 he is as much mistaken as the old woman, men- 

 tioned by Bayle, who, never having put her head out 

 of her window without seeing coaches in the Rue 

 St Honore, imagined herself to be the cause of their 

 passing. 



" I wish, for the honour of science, that I could 

 have dispensed witli taking any serious notice of 

 the ridiculous ideas I have just adverted to; but I 

 am satisfied that this exposition will not be with- 

 out use, for Gregory, Sydenham, and Lubinietski 

 have many followers among us. Moreover, if you 

 will only listen, in those circles which are called 

 fashionable, to the long discourses of which the 

 approaching comet is the theme, you may decide 

 whether there is any room to congratulate ourselves 

 upon the pretended diffusion of knowledge, which 

 so many perfectionists are pleased to consider as 

 the distinguishing feature of our age. For myself, I 

 have long been cured of these illusions. Under tin: 

 brilliant but superficial gloss, with which the p'i 



