“To begin with, what an amazing comet that must have been from which these five, and we know not how many more, were formed by disaggregative processes—probably by the divellent action of repulsive forces exerted by the sun! Those who remember the comets of 1843 and 1882 as they appeared when at their full splendor will be able to imagine how noble an appearance a comet would present which was formed of these combined together in one. But the comet of 1880 was described by all who saw it in the southern hemisphere as most remarkable in appearance, despite the faintness of its head. The great southern comet of the present year (1887) was a striking object in the skies, though it showed the same weakness about the head. That of 1668 was probably as remarkable in appearance as even the comet of 1882. A comet formed by combining all these together would certainly surpass in magnificence all the comets ever observed by astronomers. “And then, what enormous periods of time must have been required to distribute the fragments of a single comet so widely that one would be found returning to its perihelion more than two centuries after another! When I spoke of one member of the Biela group being in aphelion, when another would be in perihelion, I was speaking of a difference of only three and one-third years in time; and even that would require thousands of years. But the scattered cometic bodies which returned to the sun’s neighborhood in 1668 and 1887 speak probably of millions of years which have passed since first this comet was formed. It would be a matter of curious inquiry to determine what may have been the condition of our sun, what even his volume, at that remote period in history.” In view of our present knowledge of the status of the sun as a comparative dwarf in the stellar system, may it not have been a giant star at that remote period of its existence above referred to, rivaling in volume the giant star Betelgeuse with its diameter exceeding two hundred million miles.[13] At that period of the evolution of the sun, how terrific must have been the force of the upheavals which rent its surface, flinging forth cometic material with incalculable speed, to distances far exceeding any known in connection with the comets with which we are familiar. Regarding the solar origin of comets, Dr. A. C. D. Crommelin writes as follows in _Splendour of the Heavens_, page 407: