"
Man, by an inherited instinct, regards the comet as a great terror
and a great foe; and the heart of humanity sits uneasily when one
blazes in the sky. Even to the scholar and the scientist they are a
puzzle and a fear; they are erratic, unusual, anarchical,
monstrous--something let loose, like a tiger of the heavens, athwart
an orderly, peaceful, and harmonious world. They may be impalpable
and harmless attenuations of gas, or they way be loaded with death
and ruin; but in any event man can not contemplate them without
terror.
[1. 1 Henry VI, 1, 1.]
{p. 431}
CHAPTER VII.
THE EARTH STRUCK BY COMETS MANY TIMES.
IF the reader is satisfied, from my reasoning and the facts I have
adduced, that the so-called Glacial Age really represents a collision
of the earth with one of these wandering luminaries of space, the
question can not but occur to him, Was this the first and only
occasion, during all the thousands of millions of years that our
planet has been revolving on its axis and circling around the sun,
that such a catastrophe has occurred?
The answer must be in the negative.
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