had been extraordinary meteoric displays, from the year 902 a. d. to the year 1833 a. d. He reminds me of an investigator who searched old records for appearances of Halley’s comet, and found something that he identified as Halley’s comet, exactly on time, every seventy-five years, back to times of the Roman Empire. See the Edinburgh Review, vol. 66. It seems that he did not know that orthodoxy does not attribute exactly a seventy-five year period to Halley’s comet. He got what he went looking for, anyway. I have no disposition for us to enjoy ourselves at Prof. Newton’s expense, because, surely enough, his method, if regarded as only experimental, or tentative, is legitimate enough, though one does suspect him of very loose behavior in his picking and choosing. But Dr. Adams announced that, upon mathematical grounds, he had arrived at the same conclusion.
The test:
The next return of the Leonids were predicted for November, 1899.
Memoirs of the British Astronomical Association, 9-6:
“No meteoric event ever before aroused such widespread interest, or so grievously disappointed anticipation.”
There were no Leonids in November, 1899.
It was explained. They would be seen next year.
There were no Leonids in November, 1900.
It was explained. They would be seen next year.
No Leonids.
Vaunt and inflation and parade of the symbols of the infinitesimal calculus; the pomp of vectors, and the hush that surrounds quaternions: but when an axis of co-ordinates loses its rectitude, in the service of a questionable selection, disciplined symbols become a rabble. The Most High of Mathematics—and one of his supposed prophets points to the sky. Nowhere near where he points, something is found. He points to a date—nothing happens.
Prof. Serviss, in Astronomy in a Nutshell, explains. He explains that the Leonids did not appear, when they “should” have appeared, because Jupiter and Saturn had altered their orbits.
Back in the times of the Crusades, and nothing was disturb-
