Ragnarok : the age of fire and gravel

94 THE COMET.

head. And I haye not drawn the comet on a scale large enough as compared with the earth.

If the reader will examine the map on page 93, he will see that the distribution of the Drift accords with this theory. If we suppose the side of the earth shown in the left-hand figure was presented to the comet, we will see why the Drift is supposed to be confined to Europe, Africa, and parts of America; while the right-hand figure will show the half of the world that escaped.

“The breadth of the tail of the great comet of 1811, at its widest part, was nearly fourteen million miles, the length one hundred and sixteen million miles, and that of the second comet of the same year, one hundred and forty million miles.” *

On page 95 is a representation of this monster.

Imagine such a creature as that, with a head fifty times as large as the moon, and a tail one hundred and sixteen million miles long, rushing past this poor little earth of ours, with its diameter of only seven thousand nine hundred and twenty-five miles! The earth, seven thousand nine hundred and twenty-five miles wide, would simply make a bullet-hole through that tail, fourteen million miles broad, where it passed through it !—a mere eyelethole—a pin-hole—closed up at once by the constant movements which take place in the tail of the comet. And yet in that moment of contact the side of the earth facing the comet might be covered with hundreds of feet of

débris.

Or, on the other hand, the comet may, as described in some of the legends, have struck the earth, head on, amid-ships, and the shock may have changed the angle of inclination of the earth’s axis, and thus have modified

* Schellen, “Spectrum Analysis,” p. 392.