METEORS. 177 



clear whether comets, which are undoubtedly associated 

 with meteors in some unexplained way, are to be re- 

 garded as composed of matter which has never yet 

 belonged to the substance of a sun, or as composed of 

 sun-rejected matter. But the paths followed by some 

 comets would lead to the conclusion that these comets 

 at least have been projected with considerable velocity 

 from the interior of stars. It is well known that some 

 of the comets which have appeared in our skies have 

 been found to traverse paths so shaped that the comet 

 cannot possibly return to our sun's neighbourhood. 

 When a comet has a path of this sort, we see that it 

 does not belong to our sun's domain, for it is free, after 

 its visit, to retire into the depths of space ; nor can the 

 comet have belonged to the domain of the sun it last 

 visited, for otherwise it would not have been free to 

 visit our sun's realm: and tracing back the comet's 

 course through as many visits to different star domains 

 as fancy may suggest, we yet never find that it could 

 have belonged to the domain of any star. The only 

 conceivable explanation of its first appearance on the 

 stellar scene seems to be that which regards it as ejected 

 bodily from some orb among those which shine amid 

 the depths surrounding us. It may seem fanciful to 

 recognise the action of the same sort of repulsive force 

 which first ejected the comet, in the repulsive effect 

 undoubtedly exercised on the matter composing the 

 tails of comets which approach our sun. Yet after all, 

 this repulsive effect, and the enormous velocity of 

 motion which it is capable of producing (as Sir John 



