suddenly many hundreds of times greater than they were before." The Spectator is exercised by the inquiry whether the world's belief in science is quite so genuine as it seems, seeing that "Mr. Proctor's warning has not yet caused the world to make any change in its arrangements." Without undertaking to say what change the world should make in its arrangements if its end were to come in a few years, I may remark that my warning-such as it was— appeared in an Australian Review, and was not published in this hemisphere until a very few weeks ago (the preface to the volume is dated December, 1881, and the title-page bears the date 1882), so that the wonder rather should be how my terrible prediction comes so soon to be frightening fearful folk from their customary quietude. If it were not that his Right Reverend Lordship the Bishop of Manchester had been chiefly instrumental in calling general attention to the prediction, the world might well imagine that the scare was a well-designed puff for my new volume, in which case I might be anxious to explain that, according to the terms between myself and Messrs. Chatto & Windus, I could not possibly gain, and might conceivably lose, by the rapid sale of the work at this present time.

Be the cause what it may, I find that I am generally understood to have issued a prediction that, somewhere about the year 1897, this world, with all that it inherit, shall be dissolved by fervent heat. Let us see what the article referred to by the Spectator really says:—

In its opening paragraph, I state that views advanced respecting the comet by others, "not by fanciful theorisers, but by mathematicians of eminence, suggest the possibility, nay, even some degree of probability, that this comet may bring danger to the solar system." And I go on to say that it is that possibility which "I have to discuss." The possibility, even some degree of probability, that a comet may bring danger-this possibility suggested by the views of others, and to be discussed by me-does not, I apprehend, amount to a definite statement on my part that there is "really a very considerable chance of a catastrophe fifteen years hence, which may put an end to our earth altogether." Let us, however, examine the article further.

I go on to show that the path of the comet of 1880 carried it singularly near to the sun. This, of course, is simply a scientific fact. I next explain that the observed part of the track of the comet of 1880 coincided, or nearly so, with that of the comet of 1843; but that, whereas the most trustworthy calculations of the orbit of the comet of 1843 assigned a period of about 175 years, the observed period of its last circuit-if that object and the comet of 1880 are really identical-was only 37 years. This part of the inquiry is more theoretical than the former. Still, the evidence is such as to make it highly probable that the comet of 1880 really is one and the same as the comet of 1843, and that there really has been a diminution of the period of revolu

tion from more than a hundred to less than forty

years.

It is towards the close of this part of the inquiry that the anticipation of the comet's return in 1897 is referred to. As presented by the Spectator and the Bishop of Manchester, this might be supposed to be such a prediction as, for instance, I made in 1868 of the epochs of the beginnings and endings of the transits of Venus in 1874 and 1812 for different parts of the earth's surface. As a matter of fact, the prediction is not mine, but Herr Marth's (quoted, and, as a quotation, given in smaller type than the rest); it is not advanced definitely, but in the following terms:-"I should not be at all surprised," says Herr Marth, "if it should turn out that this comet of 1880 is the same as the comet of 1843 and that of 1668, and that its revolution has been so much affected that possibly it may return in, say, seventeen years." (This was written in 1880.)

I go on to show that, if this is so, the comet must before long be absorbed by the sun-still not naming 1897 or any other year, but speaking with due scientific caution-" after only a few circuits-possibly one or two."

I then note the only way in which the absorption of a comet might do harm-that is, not as Newton thought, by adding fuel to the solar fires, but by the conversion of the momentum of the meteoric masses, forming or following the head, into heat. I mention, in passing, my own belief that the sudden increase of