lighted in the Parish Church at 7 o’clock (it was a Sunday), though only five days had elapsed since Midsummer day, which itself proves that some sensation of darkness was felt even while the Sun was shining. So far as I remember there has been no such thing as a comet panic during the present generation, at any rate in civilised countries, but it is on record that there was a very considerable panic in 1832 in connection with the return of Biela’s Comet in the winter of that year. Olbers as the result of a careful study in advance of the comet’s movements found that the comet’s centre would pass only 20,000 miles within the Earth’s orbit, and that as the nebulosity of the comet had in 1805 been more than 20,000 miles in diameter, it was certain, unless its dimensions had diminished in the 27 years, that some of the comet’s matter would overlap the Earth’s orbit; in other words would envelop the Earth itself, if the Earth happened to be there. This conclusion when it became public was quite enough to create a panic and make people talk about the forthcoming destruction of our globe. It was nothing to the point (in the public mind) that astronomers were able to predict that the Earth would not reach the place where the comet would cross the Earth’s orbit until four weeks after the comet had come and gone. However, we now know that nothing happened, and I am justified in adding that even if there had been contact, Earth meeting comet face to face, nothing (serious) would have occurred so far as the Earth was concerned. This seems a convenient place for referring to a matter which when it was first broached excited a great deal of interest, but about which one does not hear much now-a-days. The period of the small comet known as Encke’s (which, revolving as it does round the Sun in a little more than three years, has the shortest period of any of the periodical comets) was found many years ago to be diminishing at each successive return. That is to say, it always attained its nearest distance from the Sun at each apparition 2½ hours sooner than it ought to have done. In order to account for this gradual diminution in the comet’s period Encke conjectured the existence of a thin ethereal medium sufficiently dense to affect a light flimsy body like a comet, but incapable of obstructing a planet. It has been remarked by Hind that “this contraction of the orbit must be continually progressing, if we suppose the existence of such a medium; and we are naturally led to inquire, What will be the final consequence of this resistance? Though the catastrophe may be averted for many ages by the powerful attraction of the larger planets, especially Jupiter, will not the comet be at last precipitated on the Sun? The question is full of interest, though altogether open to conjecture.”