Page:The story of the comets.djvu/257

XIII. is an interesting question which must be handled with discretion. There is no doubt that the trend of scientific opinion is in the direction of suggesting that comets furnish the numerous meteors which traverse space and frequently manifest themselves to us on the Earth; and to Schiaparelli must be given the credit of first demonstrating the connection. Sir N. Lockyer goes beyond this, for in his view comets are naught else but immense aggregations of meteors, and naturally if they throw off anything it is meteoric particles which they throw off. It must, however, be confessed that the subject has not made much progress of late, notwithstanding the great number of comets which have appeared during the last 20 years, coupled with the multiplication of observers and observations of luminous meteors.

Though to Schiaparelli the leading place of honour has been given in the foregoing pages, the meritorious labours must not be ignored of several other astronomers who cleared the way and furnished many of the materials the utilisation of which led to the actual discovery. Thus in 1861, several years before Schiaparelli began his labours, Kirkwood broached the theory that "meteors and meteoric rings are the débris of ancient but now disintegrated comets, whose matter has become distributed around their orbits". And writers even earlier than Kirkwood had expressed ideas not materially different; but unfortunately they could not command the data required to give practical support to their views, which were in consequence disregarded as idle speculations.

J. Glaisher well summed up the matter in saying that "The intimate connection now known to exist between comets and meteors is perhaps the most striking and novel discovery of a purely astronomical kind that has been made in our time", with the exception (I think I should like to add) of the discovery of Neptune.