VIII

THE METEOR


The next morning, after breakfast, Hogarth went down old Thring
Street, and spent a penny for a note-book to contain the signatures
of his association.

But this was no day for interest in that scheme: for under the
projecting first-floor of the paper-shop were newspaper placards
bearing such words as:

THE EARTH IN DANGER

SHALL WE PERISH TO-NIGHT?

and Hogarth was soon bending in the street over a paragraph, short--
but in _pica_.

M. Tissot, the astronomer, had, at half-past ten the previous night,
observed through the 40-inch telescope of the Nice observatory a
body which seemed a tiny planet or aerolite of abnormal size. It was
sighted at a point two degrees W. of _a_ Librae at an angle of
431/2 deg. with the horizon, and had been photographed, its elements
calculated, its spectrum taken. The ascertained diameter was 3 deg. 17",
or about 73 miles, and its substance seemed to consist of ironstone
mixed with diamond.

By noon a fresh light was thrown upon the little world, the Yerkes