they lie most directly beneath her, and thus prevents, to a large
extent, the negative discharges to which the appearance of the Aurora
is due. And so ``the extravagant and erring spirit'' of the Aurora
avoids the moon as Hamlet's ghost fled at the voice of the cock
announcing the awakening of the god of day.

There are even other apparent confirmations of the hypothesis, but we
need not go into them. We shall, however, find one more application of
it in the next chapter, for it appears to be a kind of cure-all for
astronomical troubles; at any rate it offers a conceivable solution of
the question, How does the sun manage to transmit its electric
influence to the earth? And this solution is so grandiose in
conception, and so novel in the mental pictures that it offers, that
its acceptance would not in the least detract from the impression that
the Aurora makes upon the imagination.

Strange Adventures of Comets

The fears and legends of ancient times before Science was born, and
the superstitions of the Dark Ages, sedulously cultivated for
theological purposes by monks and priests, have so colored our ideas
of the influence that comets have had upon the human mind that many
readers may be surprised to learn that it was the apparition of a
wonderful comet, that of 1843, which led to the foundation of our
greatest astronomical institution, the Harvard College Observatory. No
doubt the comet superstition existed half a century ago, as, indeed,
it exists yet today, but in this case the marvelous spectacle in the
sky proved less effective in inspiring terror than in awakening a
desire for knowledge. Even in the sixteenth century the views that
enlightened minds took of comets tended powerfully to inspire popular