prepared paper.' Seeing that where the two meteors fell the sun's
surface glowed thus intensely, and that the effect of this accession of
energy upon our earth was thus well marked, can it be doubted that a
comet, bearing in its train a flight of many millions of meteoric
masses, and falling directly upon the sun, would produce an accession of
light and heat whose consequences would be disastrous? When the earth
has passed through the richer portions (not the actual nuclei, be it
remembered) of meteor systems, the meteors visible from even a single
station have been counted by tens of thousands, and it has been computed
that millions must have fallen upon the whole earth. These were meteors
following in the train of very small comets. If a very large comet
followed by no denser a flight of meteors, but each meteoric mass much
larger, fell directly upon the sun, it would not be the outskirts but
the nucleus of the meteoric train which would impinge upon him. They
would number thousands of millions. The velocity of downfall of each
mass would be more than 360 miles per second. And they would continue to
pour in upon him for several days in succession, millions falling every
hour. It seems not improbable that, under this tremendous and
long-continued meteoric hail, his whole surface would be caused to glow
as intensely as that small part whose brilliancy was so surprising in
the observation made by Carrington and Hodgson. In that case, our sun,
seen from some remote star whence ordinarily he is invisible, would
shine out as a new sun, for a few days, while all things living on our
earth, and whatever other members of the solar system are the abode of
life, would inevitably be destroyed.

The reader must not suppose that this idea has been suggested merely in
the attempt to explain outbursts of stars. The following passage from a
paper of considerable scientific interest by Professor Kirkwood, of
Bloomington, Indiana, a well-known American astronomer, shows that the
idea had occurred to him for a very different reason. He speaks here of
a probable connection between the comet of 1843 and the great sun-spot
which appeared in June 1843. I am not sure, however, but that we may
regard the very meteors which seem to have fallen on the sun on
September 1, 1859, as bodies travelling in the track of the comet of
1843--just as the November meteors seen in 1867-8, 9, etc., until 1872,
were bodies certainly following in the track of t