The West Coast Times. MONDAY, MARCH 21, 1910. RETURN OF HALLEY’S COMET.

West Coast Times, 21 March 1910, Page 2

The West Coast Times. MONDAY, MARCH 21, 1910. RETURN OF HALLEY’S COMET.

It is not remarkable that people are beginning to show an interest in the approaching return of Halley’s Comet to within the range of naked-eye observation. That is quite right and praiseworthy. But it is not a little remarkable that so many people associate with the fact the idea of possible danger to the inhabitants of the earth. Which is neither right nor reasonable. That this is done is partly due, no doubt, to what must be considered a foolish alarmist forecast of the possibilities of the case, attributed to the celebrated French astronomer M. Camille Flarnmarion—though we should not be at all surprised to learn that he had repudiated the statement referred to, if he ever heard of it. Anyhow, the alleged Flarnmarion forecast has been widely disseminated, and the threat of danger it contained has not been completely offset by the contrary opinions of numerous other astronomers, which have also been widely published. Unscientific people are always ready to fear evil from the unknown, if evil is asserted of it. So far as the history of comets goes, he earth has never suffered injury from any of the large number which have come within the range of vision since the invention of the art of writing, and there does not appear to be any clear tradition from prehistoric times of injury having been done by a comet. Of recent times 'there are vague traditions that visits of these peculiar wanderers, have, on the contrary, been beneficent, by way of improving the vintages of their years. An industrous American lawyer, Mr Ignatius Donelly after some valuable experience in research on another old-time question, obtained material enough to fill a book, which he published to prove that the Flood was part of an almost complete destruction of the earth caused by a comet; but his ignorance of geology led him wildly astray, as he found the comet’s destructive tail in what is well

known in geology as the product of the northern glacial period. Dr Donelly certainly amassed a large amount of ancient and very curious disaster lore, from various parts of the earth; but whatever this might he used to prove it has no special relation to comets, and probably he would .not have thought of associating it with a comet, but for his huge blunder about the glacial drift. It has, however, clear relation to the celestial sphere, though not to comets especially, and it I is an unquestionable fact that amongst uncivilised and half civilised races today, there is latent an instinctive dread of unusual appearances in the heavens as if at some time or other, long ago, an extremely serious and widespread disaster occurred at the same time that some unusual astronomical phenomenon was observed. The two things would be easily associated as cause and effect, though they have had no such relation. It appears to be quite an easy thing to awaken this slumbering instinctive fear of the end of the world; at all events there have been instances within the last few centuries, in which even civilised communities have been terrified and panic stricken by the mere assertions of hysterical lunatics that the time of the end was at hand. A striking example of the force of this instinctive fear and an evidence of its connection with abnormal phenomena in the skies, were afforded by the behaviour of some Russian peasants when a few years ago, a very fine lisower of meteors beautified the sky one night. They not only rushed to their churches to pray, but some of them killed their infant children to save them from the imagined horrors of the last day. The Chinese, as is familiarly known, have noisy ceremonies, amusing to us, for driving off the demons that cause eclipses. The panic fears referred to, and the Chinese practices, doubtless had some real cause for their origination long ago; but it is in the last degree unlikely that a comet was that cause. It is to be hoped that people will not talk, or encourage talk, about possible danger from Halley’s Comet. There is much more likelihood of mischief being done by such talk than by the comet itself.