THE NEW STAR WHICH FADED INTO STAR-MIST. 113 



properly called nebulae. There may be small clouds of 

 the same sort scattered much more freely through space ; 

 but we have not a particle of evidence that this is actually 

 the case. All we certainly know about star-cloudlets sug- 

 gests that the distances separating them from each other are 

 comparable with those which separate star from star, in 

 which case the idea of a star coming into collision with a ' 

 star-cloudlet, and still more the idea of this occurring several 

 times in a century, is wild in the extreme. 



But while thus advancing objections, which seem to me 

 irrefragable, against the theory that either a planet or a 

 nebula (still less another small star) had come into collision 

 with the orb in Corona which shone out so splendidly for a 

 while, I advanced another view which seemed to me then 

 and seems now to correspond well with phenomena, and to 

 render the theory of action from without on the whole 

 preferable to the theory of outburst from within. I sug- 

 gested that, far more probably, an enormous flight of large 

 meteoric masses travelling around the star had come into 

 partial collision with it in the same way that the flight of 

 November meteors comes into collision with our earth 

 thrice in each century, and that other meteoric flights may 

 occasionally come into collision with our sun, producing the 

 disturbances which occasion the sun-spots. As I pointed 

 out, in conceiving this we are imagining nothing new. A 

 meteoric flight capable of producing the suggested effects 

 would differ only in kind from meteoric flights which are 

 known to circle around our own sun. The meteors which 

 produce the November displays of falling stars follow in the 

 track of a comet barely visible to the naked eye. 



"May we not reasonably assume that those glorious 

 comets which have not only been visible but conspicuous, 

 shining even in the day-time, and brandishing around tails, 

 which like that of the ' wonder in heaven, the great dragon,' 

 seemed to ' draw the third part of the stars of heaven,' are 

 followed by much denser flights of much more massive 

 meteors? Some of these giant comets have paths which 



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