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Footnote 1:
Chambers’s _Story of the Comets_, pp. 211–212.
Footnote 2:
_Journal_ of the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol.
xxiii. Account of comets given by Mohammedan historians.
Footnote 3:
This disposes of the story according to which, when the reporter of a
Sydney newspaper asked the writer if she had discovered any comets,
she modestly replied, “Yes, a few.”
Footnote 4:
_Nature_, June 16, 1887.
Footnote 5:
See Flammarion’s _History of the Heavens_, p. 348.
Footnote 6:
_Monthly Notices_, R.A.S., vol. vii, p. 73, March, 1846.
Footnote 7:
See _Astronomische Nachrichten_, vol. 104, p. 129.
Footnote 8:
The camera with which the meteor was photographed by Dr. W. J. S.
Lockyer is placed specially for recording meteors. It is orientated to
the polar stars simply for the purpose of being able to identify the
stars to deduce the path of the meteor, should one be recorded.
Otherwise, no interest is attached to the polar star trails, as such.
Footnote 9:
In Rebièrés’ _Les Femmes dans la Science_ he writes as follows about
Madame Lepaute: “A little girl of six years when taunted one day by
her sister with the remark, ‘I am prettier than you,’ made the ready
rejoinder, ‘But I am wiser.’ The future career of Nicole Rêine Étable
de la Briére, afterwards wife of the famous clock-maker, Jean André
Lepaute, proved the truthfulness of her boast.”
Footnote 10:
Perihelion about February, 1986. The comet probably will be first seen
during the spring of 1965.
Footnote 11:
It is now thought that the temperature of such small bodies will never
have been high enough to call them suns. Eddington says a mass
one-eighth of that of the sun would be required for this.
Footnote 12:
Perturbations will make very great changes in the orbits. The
perihelion distance of Pons-Winnecke has increased twenty million
miles or more in the past sixty years.
Footnote 13:
Recent papers tend to the conclusion that the transformation from
giants to dwarfs is very slow. Jeans and Jeffreys both think that the
change in the sun in 1,000 million years has been slight.
Footnote 14:
On rare occasions meteors have fallen on houses, as in the case of the
Strathmore meteorite, photographed by H. Coates. He also took a
photograph of Outh Lodge, Keithick, on which the meteorite fell,
December 3, 1917. It made a hole in the roof of the house. The owners
thereof, Mr. and Mrs. Hill, are included in the photograph, which was
sent to the writer by Mr. W. E. Denning.
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