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Show ley's, yet in 1819 and 1861 the earth passed through large comets ' and but few realized what was happening. Nevertheless, all who are interested in the heavenly bodies will expect to find much of interest in the night of May 18th and 19th, and astronomers the world round will be wakeful then. The comet's head transits the sun's face at 9 p. m.f eastern time, and by eastern time we will encounter the tail about midnight and pass through it until dawn, the morning of the 18th. The tail should stretch from horizon to horizon, from east to west, and the evening of the 19th from horizon to horizon, from west to east. This must be corrected for mountain time. Professor See says the best time for the Pacific coast to see it 'will be from 4 to 10, May 18th. The same distinguished-gentleman says the comet will be brightest from May 18th to 30th. In this many differ from him. Like most great astronomical events, the passage of the comet across the sun's di3k will mean most to those who are prepared by study and instruments to observe and comprehend the many shades of influence and phenomena resultant. But it i3 a fact that for all it will be the most striking phenomenon of the kind we will be privileged priv-ileged to witness. True another bright comet might come, but the chances are about a million to one that none of us shall ever again see so great a comet or witness another one cross the sun's disk. PASSING THROUGH COMET'S TAIL. As was stated in our dispatches, the average speed of a cannon ball is three-tenths of a mile a second. The combined speed of the earth and Halley's comet as they speed by on the night of May 18th will be forty-three miles a second. Were the particles of the comet's tail of any material substance of density we can readily see what the result would be. However, the comet's tail is no more the comet than is the sun's ray the sun, and we shall pass the comet at a distance of 14,000,000 miles, or about fifty times the distance of the moon. It would take our fastest train over twenty-five years constant running to reach it. ; The principal poison, as the spectrum reveals to us, which is found in the comet's tail, is cyanogen, so named because of its resemblance re-semblance to Prussian blue, one of its compounds. Cyanogen is a colorless gas having the odor of peach kernels and is obtained by i heating mercuric cyanide and consists of the elements carbon and nitrogen. But no poison is dangerous when thinly diluted. We breathe diluted poison every day. Our breath is a diluted poison. The con-j con-j Btituency of the comet's tail, through which we pa3s, can be inferred j from the statement of Professor Newcomb, America's greatest astron- i omcr, when he says that the tail is so thin that the best vacuum ob- ' tainable in a laboratory is as a solid millstone in comparison. Deadly elements have been poured into our atmosphere many ! times. In 1882 we had red sunsets for weeks after the volcano in j Java had filled the atmosphere with diluted poison. Our air is able to : purify itself, so that no danger results. Moreover, we have about 1 200 miles of pure air heaped over our heads as a protection. While wc have never passed through so great a comet as Hal- |
