"[1]
On page 95 is a representation of this monster.
Imagine such a creature as that, with a head _fifty times as large as
the moon_, and a tail one hundred and sixteen million miles long,
rushing past this poor little earth of ours, with its diameter of
only seven thousand nine hundred and twenty-five miles! The earth,
seven thousand nine hundred and twenty-five miles wide, would simply
make a bullet-hole through that tail, fourteen million miles broad,
where it passed through it!--a mere eyelet-hole--a pin-hole--closed
up at once by the constant movements which take place in the tail of
the comet. And yet in that moment of contact the side of the earth
facing the comet might be covered with hundreds of feet of _d?bris_.
Or, on the other hand, the comet may, as described in some of the
legends, have struck the earth, head on, amid-ships, and the shock
may have changed the angle of inclination of the earth's axis, and
thus have modified
[1. Schellen, "Spectrum Analysis," p. 392.]
{p. 95}
permanently the climate of our globe; and to this cause we might look
also for the great cracks and breaks in the earth's surface, which
constitute the fiords of the sea-coast and the trap-extrusions of the
continents; and here, too,
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THE GREAT COMET OF 1811.
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