“May 14th. The memoir of M. de Lalande has appeared. He says that it is his opinion that, of the sixty known comets, eight, by their near approach to the earth, might produce a pressure such that the sea would leave its bed and cover a part of the world.” In time, the excitement died away. The fear of comets assumed a new form. They were no longer regarded as indications of the anger of God, but their collision with the earth was discussed from a scientific point of view, and these collisions were not considered free of danger. At the close of the last century, Laplace stated his views on this question, in the forcible language which we have quoted in Chapter II. In this century, predictions concerning the end of the world have several times been associated with the appearance of comets. It was announced that the comet of Biela, for example, would intersect the earth’s orbit on October 29, 1832, which it did, as predicted. There was great excitement. Once more the end of things was declared at hand. Humanity was threatened. What was going to happen? The orbit, that is to say the path, of the earth had been confounded with the earth itself. The latter was not to reach that point of its orbit traversed by the comet until November 30th, more than a month after the comet’s passage, and the latter was at no time to be within 20,000,000 leagues of us. Once more we got off with a fright. It was the same in 1857. Some prophet of ill omen had declared that the famous comet of Charles V., whose periodic time was thought to be three centuries, would return on the 13th of June of that year. More than one timid soul was rendered anxious, and the confessionals of Paris were more than usually crowded with penitents. Another prediction was made public in 1872, in the name of an astronomer, who, however, was not responsible for it—M. Plantamour, director of the Geneva observatory. As in the case of comets, so with other unusual phenomena, such as total solar eclipses, mysterious suns appearing suddenly in the skies, showers of shooting stars, great volcanic eruptions accompanied with the darkness of night and seeming to threaten the burial of the world in ashes, earthquakes overthrowing and engulfing houses and cities—all these grand and terrible events have been connected with the fear of an immediate and universal end of men and things.