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NEW LANDS
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ing the Leonids—and if you’re stronger for dates than I am, think of some more dates, and nothing was altering the orbit of the Leonids—discovery of America, and the Spanish Armada, in 1588, which, by some freak, I always remember, and no effects by Jupiter and Saturn—French Revolution and on to the year 1866, and still nothing the matter with the Leonids—but, once removed from “discovery” and “identification,” and that’s the end of their period, diverted by Jupiter and Saturn, old things that had been up in the sky at least as long as they had been. If we’re going to accept the calculi at all, the calculus of probabilities must have a hearing. My own opinion, based upon reading many accounts of November meteors, is that decidedly the display of 1833 did not repeat in 1866: that a false priest sinned and that an equally false highpriest gave him sanction.

The tragedy goes comically on. I feel that, to all good Neo-astronomers, I can recommend the following serenity from an astronomer who was unperturbed by what happened to his science, in November, 1899, and some more Novembers—

Bryant, A History of Astronomy, p. 252:

That the meteoric display of 1899 had failed to appear—“as had been predicted by Dr. Downing and Dr. Johnstone Stoney.”

One starts to enjoy this disguisement, thinking of virtually all the astronomers in the world who had predicted the return of the Leonids, and the finding, by Bryant, of two who had not, and his recording only the opinion of these two, coloring so as to look like another triumph—but we may thank our sorely stimulated suspiciousness for still richer enjoyment—That even these two said no such saving thing—

Nature, Nov. 9, 1899:

Dr. Downing and Dr. Stoney, instead of predicting failure of the Leonids to appear, advise watch for them several hours later than had been calculated.

I conceive of the astronomers’ fictitious paradise as malarchitectural with corrupted equations, and paved with rotten symbols. Seeming pure, white fountains of formal vanities—boasts that are gushing from decomposed triumphs. We shall find their furnishings shabby with tarnished comets. We turn expectantly to the subject of comets; or we turn cynically to

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