Ragnarok : the age of fire and gravel

106 THE COMET.

first flowed through the Drift, we are told, were poisonous. We have but to remember that carbureted hydrogen is the deadly fire-damp of the miners to realize what effect great gusts of it must have had on animal life.

We are told* that it burns with a yellow flame when subjected to great heat, and some of the legends, we will see hereafter, speak of the “yellow hair” of the comet that struck the earth.

And we are further told that, “when it, carbureted hydrogen, is mixed in due proportion with oxygen or atmospheric air, a compound is produced which explodes with the electric spark or the approach of flame.” Another form of carbureted hydrogen, olefiant gas, is deadly to life, burns with a white light, and when mixed with three or four volumes of oxygen, or ten or twelve of air, it explodes with terrific violence.

We shall see, hereafter, that many of the legends tell us that, as the comet approached the earth, that is, as it entered our atmosphere and combined with it, it gave forth world-appalling noises, thunders beyond all earthiy thunders, roarings, howlings, and hissings, that shook the globe. If a comet did come, surrounded by yolumes of carbureted hydrogen, or carbon combined with hydrogen, the moment it reached far enough into our atmosphere to supply it with the requisite amount of oxygen or atmospheric air, precisely such dreadful explosions would oceur, accompanied hy noises similar to those deseribed in the legends.

Let us go a step further:

Let us try to conceive the effects of the fall of the material of the comet upon the earth.

We have seen terrible rain-storms, hail-storms, snow-