Ragnarok : the age of fire and gravel

THE CONSEQUENCES TO THE EARTH. 91

CHAPTER IY. THE CONSEQUENCES TO THE EARTH.

Iy this chapter I shall try to show what effect the contact of acomet must have had upon the earth and its inhabitants. I shall ask the reader to follow the argument closely : first, that he may see whether any part of the theory is inconsistent with the well-established principles of natural philosophy ; and, secondly, that he may bear the several steps in his memory, as he will find, as we proceed, that every detail of the mighty catastrophe has been preserved in the legends of mankind, and precisely in the order in which reason tells us they must haye occurred,

In the first place, it is, of course, impossible at this time to say precisely how the contact took place ; whether the head of the comet fell into or approached close to the sun, like the comet of 1843, and then swung its mighty tail, hundreds of millions of miles in length, moving at a rate almost equal to the velocity of light, around through a great arc, and swept past the earth ;—the earth, as it were, going through the midst of the tail, which would extend for a vast distance beyond and around it. In this movement, the side of the earth, facing the advance of the tail, would receive and intercept the mass of material—stones, gravel, and the finely-ground-up-dust which, compacted by water, is now clay—which came in contact with it, while the comet would sail off into space,