has frequent sailings from They. have, fewer in number, seen but seldom.
This discovery, sübsequently confirmed by the observation of other comets, also provided the key to the mystery of the composition of comets generally, which are believed to be nothing but masses of more or less closely packed meteors, post fragments of a former sold mass of material enveloped by a far greater mass of very tenuous gas-like substance, which, owing to some radiating force from the' Sun, streams out on the side of the comet directly away from the Sun as the comet approaches and circles round the latter.
The Leonid meteors are the remains of Temple's Comet, last seen in 1866, the Perseids of the comet of 1862, while the Draconids are connected with Giacobinis Comrt, which in 1933 cut across the Earth's orbit in July, after having been looked for in vain by astronomers for six months. Had it reached this point three months later, which. apparently, it might have done since it was already six months overdue, there would have been a collision with the Earth, for on October 9 the Earth reached this point in its orbit and was greeted by a fine display of Shooting stars.
If that narrowly averted collision had taken place there would either have been another bright star in the sky or a few more billions of wandering meteors in space, for, after all, a meteor may perhaps best be described as a shattered fragment of a disintegrated world. It is not beyond the realms of possi! ly that some day that gold filling in my lady's molar may become a minor meteor doomed to wander forever at enormous speed through the vast distances of outer space—a comforting thought for those who yearn for eternal existence.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.