ELECTRICITY AND THE PHENOMENA OF COMETS. 397 



found to be borne out by the position of the planets at the times noted, showing 

 by all analogy that it was the influence of their spheres as related to the position 

 of the earth and the observer upon it that produced the changes in the comet's 

 appearance, and not those of the comet itself. 



We might elaborate this beyond the space we have to devote to one article, 

 but enough has been said to show that there is more than one side to this ques- 

 tion of comets and to demonstrate that the science of comets, as it is terme'd, is 

 yet in its infancy, if it can even claim to be that far advanced. Either astrono- 

 mers are guessing about them or the laws governing our solar system are not so 

 well understood as we have been led to believe. Either the one or the other of 

 these propositions is true, or else comets are but vagrants — emanations amenable 

 to no known law, or optical delusions engendered from the solar system itself — 

 like fogs or wandering clouds in our own atmosphere. 



But as we know that nothing else in the universe, that comes within our knowl- 

 edge, is without purpose and use, and that our system is but a speck in the won- 

 drous structure of the infinite, we must conclude that they have their uses and 

 -obey laws as do our planets and their sun, and that our failure to discover 

 their secret is from our own inability to read aright the machinery of the creation, 

 rather than that some mistake has been made in its adjustment, by reason of 

 which these celestial tramps are wandering about responsible to no social law re- 

 cognized by the heavenly hosts. — Kansas City Journal, Oct. 22. 



ELECTRICITY AND THE PHENOMENA OF COMETS. 



There seems to be a rapidly growing feeling among physicists that both the 

 self light of comets and the phenomena of their tails belong to the order of elec- 

 trical phenomena. Those who are disposed to believe that the truth lies in this 

 direction differ from each other in the precise modes in which they would apply the 

 known laws of electric action to the phenomena of comets. Broadly the different 

 applications of the principal of electricity which have been suggested group them- 

 selves about the common idea that great electric disturbances are set up by the 

 Sun's action in connection with the vaporization of some of the matters of the 

 nucleus, and that the tail is probably matter carried away, possibly in connection 

 with electric discharges, under an electrical influence of repulsion excited by the 

 Sun. This view necessitates the supposition that the Sun is strongly electrified, 

 ■either negatively or positively, and, further, that in the processes taking place in 

 the comet, either of vaporization or of some other kind, the matter thrown out 

 by the nucleus has become strongly electrified in the same way as the Sun, /. e., 

 negatively if the Sun's electricity is negative, tr positively if the Sun's is positive. 

 The enormous disturbances which the spectroscope shows to be always at work 

 in the Sun must be accompanied by electrical changes of equal magnitude, but 

 we know nothing as to how far these are all, or the great majority of them in one 

 direction, so as to cause the Sun to maintain permanently a high electrical state, 



