Ragnarok : the age of fire and gravel

400 CONCLUSIONS.

comet’s attraction, represented in a fearful rate of motion, that tore and pounded and scratched and furrowed our poor earth’s face, as shown in the crushed and striated rocks under the Drift. They would have gone clean through the earth to follow the comet, if it had been possible.

If we can suppose the actual bulk of the comet to have greatly exceeded the bulk of the earth, then the superior attraction of the comet may have shocked the earth out of position. It has already been suggested that the inclination of the axis of the earth may have been changed at the time of the Drift ; and the Esquimaux haye a legend that the earth was, at that time, actually shaken out of its position. But upon this question I express no opinion.

But another may say :

“Your theory is impossible; these dense masses of clay and gravel could not have fallen from a comet, be-

cause the tails of comets are composed of material so attenuated that sometimes the stars are seen through them.”

Granted : but remember that the clay did not come to the earth as clay, but as a finely comminuted powder or dust ; it packed into clay after haying been mixed with water. The particles of this dust must have been widely separated while in the comet’s tail ; if they had not been, instead of a deposit of a few hundred feet, we should haye had one of hundreds of miles in thickness. We haye seen, (page 94, ante,) that the tail of one comet was thirteen million miles broad ; if the particles of dust composing that tail had been as minute as those of clay-dust, and if they had been separated from each other by many feet in distance, they would still have left a deposit on the face of any object passing through them much greater than the Drift. To illustrate my meaning: you ride .on a summer day a hundred miles in a railroad-car, seated by an open win-