When we consider the millions of comets around us, and when we remember how near some of these have come to us during the last few years, who will undertake to say that during the last thirty thousand, fifty thousand, or one hundred thousand years, one of these erratic luminaries, with blazing front and train of _débris_, may not have come in collision with the earth? {p. 91} CHAPTER IV. THE CONSEQUENCES TO THE EARTH. IN this chapter I shall try to show what effect the contact of a comet must have had upon the earth and its inhabitants. I shall ask the reader to follow the argument closely first, that he may see whether any part of the theory is inconsistent with the well-established principles of natural philosophy; and, secondly, that he may bear the several steps in his memory, as he will find, as we proceed, that _every detail of the mighty catastrophe has been preserved in the legends of mankind_, and precisely in the order in which reason tells us they must have occurred. In the first place, it is, of course, impossible at this time to say precisely how the contact took place; whether the head of the comet fell into or approached close to the sun, like the comet of 1843, and then swung its mighty tail, hundreds of millions of miles in length, moving at a rate almost equal to the velocity of light, around through a great are, and swept past the earth;--the earth, as it were, going through the midst of the tail, which would extend for a vast distance beyond and around it. In this movement, the side of the earth, facing the advance of the tail, would receive and intercept the mass of material--stones, gravel, and the finely-ground-up-dust which, compacted by water, is now clay--which came in contact with it, while the comet would sail off into space, {p. 92} demoralized, perhaps, in its orbit, like Lexell's comet when it became entangled with Jupiter's moons, but shorn of a comparatively small portion of its substance. The following engraving will illustrate my meaning. I can not give, even approximately, the proportions of the ### THE COMET SWEEPING PAST THE EARTH. objects represented, and thus show the immensity of the sun as compared with our insignificant little orb. In a picture showing the true proportions of the sun and earth, the sun would have to be so large that it would take up the entire page, while the earth would be but as a {p. 93} ### THE SIDE OF THE EARTH STRUCK BY THE COMET {left} THE SIDE NOT STRUCK BY THE COMET {right} {p. 94} pin-head. And I have not drawn the comet on a scale large enough as compared with the earth.