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THE INITIAL CATASTROPHE
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many supposed to be a part of the lost Biela comet. It contained graphite enough to pencil its own history, but unfortunately could not write. The direction from
The Radiant of a Meteoric Shower, showing also the Paths of Three Meteors which do not belong to this Shower—after Denning
which it came was not recorded, and so the connection between it and the comet not made out.
If our direct knowledge is thus scanty, reasoning affords surer ground for belief. For at this point there steps in a bit of news about the family relations of shooting-stars from a source hardly to have been anticipated. Indeed, it arose from the thought to examine a qualitative statement in Young's "Astronomy" quantitatively. Mathematics is simply precise reasoning,
