As before explained, the advent of a comet into our solar system is that of a stranger, with electric polarity the opposite of that of the planetary electrospheres and identical with that of the sun. Under the combined influence of the solar gravity and perturbation by the gravity of the planets these foreign bodies tend to shorten their periods, and finally fall into the ordinary array of the bodies which compose our own solar system. But when this occurs they will, in turn, become contributors to, instead of antagonists of, the energy of the sun; in other words, they must then conform electrically to the condition of the family into which they have married,--that is to say, the planets,--and a reversal of their electrical polarity will take place. This reversal of polarity is no novelty in the operation of electrical apparatus. In "Electricity in the Service of Man" we read as follows of the Voss induction machine: "This machine is exceedingly powerful in favorable weather, but has an important defect in a tendency to self-reversal, which is apt to occur at a stoppage. This defect can be produced in a Voss machine, when desired, by holding a metal point to the positive brush K. The two derived inductive circuits are beautifully manifested when this machine is worked in the dark. A luminous stream is seen pouring towards the collecting comb L on whichever side of the machine the comb is positive." It will thus be seen that simple contact of a neutral (or negatively opposite) body will reverse the electrical polarity of this machine, or even the interruption of its motion will do so at times. Possibly a similar reversal may be produced in a comet by the contact in whole or in part of its nucleus with a planetary electrosphere, since the action of gravity is entirely independent of that of the attraction or repulsion of the electrospheres of both planetary and cometic bodies. Such reversal of polarity in a comet would at once extinguish its luminosity, and the generation of oxygen would at once replace the prior generation of hydrogen, and herein we may find explained the presence of carbonic oxide in large volume and carbonic acid in small volume in the meteorite above referred to, and of which gases Professor Proctor says, "It is quite certain these gases were not taken up by the meteorolite during its flight through the air." These aggregations of discrete meteoric bodies, loosely adherent by mutual gravity alone, would be gradually torn apart by planetary interference and dragged into streams of small bodies, thenceforth traversing space in elliptical orbits around the sun, just as do the planets and planetoids. Cyanogen, also, the deadly gas so frequently found to exist in enormous quantities in the nuclei of comets, would at once disappear, by double conversion into carbonic acid, or oxide, and ammonia, or nitrogen, so that this danger, as the result of a comet's possible approach to the earth's atmosphere,