cast down a considerable part of its material on the face of Jupiter?

Encke's comet revolves around the sun in the short period of twelve
hundred and five days, and, strange to say--

"The period of its revolution is _constantly diminishing_; so that,
if this progressive diminution always follows the same rate, _the
time when the comet_, continually

[1. "Edinburgh Review," October, 1874, p. 205.]

{p. 86}

describing a spiral, _will be plunged into the incandescent mass of
the sun can be calculated_."[1]

The comet of 1874, first seen by Coggia, at Marseilles, and called by
his name, came between the earth and the sun, and _approached within
sixty thousand miles of the flaming surface of the sun_. It traveled
through this fierce blaze at the rate of _three hundred and sixty-six
miles per second!_ Three hundred and sixty-six miles _per second!_
When a railroad-train moves at the rate of a mile per minute, we
regard it as extraordinary speed; but three hundred and sixty-six
miles _per second!_ The mind fails to grasp it.

When this comet was seen by Sir John Herschel, after it had made its
grand sweep around the sun, it was not more than _six times the
breadth of the sun's face away from the sun_. And it had come
careering through infinite space with awful velocity to this close
approximation to our great luminary.