Annual report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution . ss it consist of a harmless meteorshower, for the tails of comets are certainly composed of exceedinglyminute and widely scattered particles. The ancients thought of comets as hairy objects, from the appear-ance of the tails; hence the origin of the term comet, from theGreek kometes, signifying long-haired. This belief prevailed cer-tainly up to Halleys day and generation. HALLEYS COMET CAMPBELL, 259 All sorts of fantastic and fearsome ideas have attached to comets,from early historical times to near the close of the ninete
Annual report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution . ss it consist of a harmless meteorshower, for the tails of comets are certainly composed of exceedinglyminute and widely scattered particles. The ancients thought of comets as hairy objects, from the appear-ance of the tails; hence the origin of the term comet, from theGreek kometes, signifying long-haired. This belief prevailed cer-tainly up to Halleys day and generation. HALLEYS COMET CAMPBELL, 259 All sorts of fantastic and fearsome ideas have attached to comets,from early historical times to near the close of the nineteenth writer remembers clearly that his neighbors of thirty years agoconsidered comets to be messengers of disaster. The greatest cometof the nineteenth century, Donatis, of 1858, was the accredited fore-runner of our civil war. Medieval representations of comets asflaming swords were common. (See fig. 2.) In Homers Iliad, XIX, 381, we read: Like the red star, that from his flaming hairShakes down disease, pestilence, and war. M; .vA\U, /™;uu>, / •Miinuuuvmw %Z/\0i% ^^ I^ d Fig. 2.—Representation of comets as flaming swords. From Evelyns Diary of 1624: * * * the effect of that comet, IGIS, still working in the prodigious revolu-tions now beginning in Europe, especially in Germany. From Miltons Paradise Lost, II, 708-711 : * * * and like a comet fires the length of Ophiuchus hugeIn th Arctic sky, and from his horrid hairShakes pestilence and war. Not the least of the services of science to civilization has been thegradual emancipation of humanity from all fear of comets. Astronomers will welcome the coming of Halleys comet, full ofhope that the photo-dry-plate, the spectroscope, and other ways andmeans of attack invented since its last visit in 1835 will enable themto remove something of the mystery of comets, the most mysteriousof all celestial bodies.
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