"Edinburgh Review," October, 1874, p. 205.]
{p. 86}
describing a spiral, _will be plunged into the incandescent mass of
the sun can be calculated_."[1]
The comet of 1874, first seen by Coggia, at Marseilles, and called by
his name, came between the earth and the sun, and _approached within
sixty thousand miles of the flaming surface of the sun_. It traveled
through this fierce blaze at the rate of _three hundred and sixty-six
miles per second!_ Three hundred and sixty-six miles _per second!_
When a railroad-train moves at the rate of a mile per minute, we
regard it as extraordinary speed; but three hundred and sixty-six
miles _per second!_ The mind fails to grasp it.
When this comet was seen by Sir John Herschel, after it had made its
grand sweep around the sun, it was not more than _six times the
breadth of the sun's face away from the sun_. And it had come
careering through infinite space with awful velocity to this close
approximation to our great luminary.
And remember that these comets are no animalcul?. They are monsters
that would reach from the sun to the earth.
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