104 Report of the Forest Commission, 



If we believe in all these things we believe with Bacon's great friend, Igna- 

 tius Donnelly, and find a parallel and a prediction in his " Ragnaroc." The 

 parallel is between the Chicago fire and the forest fires of the same year (1871) 

 and the great conflagrations which have just brought such disaster in Michi- 

 gan, Minnesota and Wisconsin. 



Mr. Donnelly expresses the view that the great forest fires of 1871 in the 

 northwest and the great Chicago fire were due to the presence of portions of 

 Biela's comet, which, in places, hurled its combustible gases and vapor against 

 the earth. 



Donnelly's Argument. 



In " Ragnaroc" Mr. Donnelly begins the subject of the great fires in 1871 by 

 quoting from Humboldt's ' ' Cosmos," as follows: " It is probable that the vapor 

 of the tails of comets mingled with our atmosphere in the years 1819 and 1823." 



After noting the strange action of the comet, Mr. Donnelly continues: "It 

 is true that the earth came near enough in 1872 to attract some of the wander- 

 ing gravel stones toward itself, and that they fell blazing and consuming them- 

 selves with the friction of our atmosphere, and reached the surface of our 

 planet, if at all, in cosmic dust. But where were the rest of the assets of these 

 bankrupt comets? ' Did anything out of the usual order occur on the face of 

 the earth about this time?" 



Mr. Donnelly answers his own question by describing the great forest fires of 

 the northwest which broke out on the morning of Sunday, October 8, 1871, 

 and most graphically pictures the scene as follows: 



The Furnace-like Air. 



" The summer of 1871 had been excessively dry; the moisture seemed to be 

 evaporated out of the air, and on the Sunday above named the atmospheric 

 conditions all through the northwest were of the most peculiar character. 

 * * * There was a parched, combustible, inflammable, furnace-like feeling 

 in the air that was really alarming. It felt as if there were needed but a match, 

 a spark, to cause a world-wide explosion. It was weird and unnatural. I 

 have never seen nor felt anything like it before or since. Those who experi- 

 enced it will bear me out in these statements." 



How much like this drought of 1871 has been that of the past summer, for 

 daily, for weeks at a time, we have heard of the great need of rain in the 

 northwest. 



"At that hour," continued Mr. Donnelly, " half -past 9 o'clock in the even- 

 ing, at apparently the same moment, at points hundreds of miles apart, in 

 three different States — Wisconsin, Michigan and Illinois — fires of the most 

 peculiar and devastating kind broke out, so far as we know, by spontaneous 

 combustion." 



In going into the details of the conflagration the writer describes the very 

 country where the great fires of last week have been raging. 



He quotes largely from the "History of the Great Conflagration,"* and the 

 descriptions bear such a close resemblance to these of which we have within a 



* The burning of Chicago. 



