AN exchange remarks: "The present comet in the eastern sky, which can be distinctly seen by everyone at early morning, is certainly the most remarkable one of the modern comets. Professor Lewis Swift, director of the Warner observatory, Rochester, New York, states that the comet grazed the sun so closely as to cause great disturbance, so much so, that it has divided into no less than eight separate parts, all of which can be distinctly seen by a good telescope. There is only one other instance on record, where a comet has divided, that one being Biella's comet of 1846, which separated into two parts. Applications have been made to Mr. H. H. Warner, by parties who have noticed these cometary offshoots, claiming the $200 prize for each one of them. Whether the great comet will continue to produce a brood of smaller comets remains to be seen."
It is certainly to be hoped that it will not. If the comet is going to multiply and replenish the earth, the average inhabitant had better proceed in the direction of the tall timber.
It excites and rattles us a good deal now to look out for what comets we have on hand; but that is mild, compared with what we will experience if the heavens are to be filled every spring with new laid comets, and comets that haven't got their eyes open yet. Our astronomers are able to figure on the old parent comets, and they know when to look for them, too; but if twins are to burst upon our vision occasionally, and little bob-tail orphan comets are to float around through space, we will have to kind of get up and seek out another solar system, where we will be safe from this comet foundling asylum.
Instead of the calm sky of night, flooded with the glorious effulgence of the silvery moon, surrounded by the twinkling stars, the coming sky will be one grand Fourth of July exhibit of fireworks, with a thousand little disobedient comets coming from the four corners of heaven in search of the milky way.
Possibly science may be wrong. We have known science to make bad little breaks of that kind, and when it advertised a particular show to come off, it was delayed by a wreck on the main track, or something of that kind, so that people were disappointed. Let us hope that this is the case now, and that the comets now loafing around through space with their coat tails on fire will not become parents. It would be scandalous.
A LITTLE VAGUE.
A TALL, pleasant-looking gentleman, with quick, restless eyes, and the air of a man who had been in a newspaper office before, dropped into The Boomerang science department yesterday, and asked the pale, scholarly blossom, who sat writing an epic on the alarming prevalence of pip and its future as a national evil, if he could be permitted to read the Deseret News.
The scientist said certainly, and after a long and weary tussle got the Mormon placque out of the ruins.
"I used to be foreman on the Deseret News," said the gentleman with the penetrating eye; "I worked on the News two years, and had a case on the Tribune. I've been foreman of thirty-seven papers during my life, but my most unfortunate experience was on the Deseret News. I wanted the paper just now to see if they were still running an ad. that I had some trouble with when I was there.
"It was a contract we had with Dr. Balshazzer to advertise his Blue Eyed Forget-me Not Perfume, Dr. Balshazzer's Red Tar Worm Buster, and Dr. Balshazzer's Baled Brain Food and Tolurockandryeandcodliveroil. The Blue Eyed Forget-me Not Perfume was to go solid in long primer, following pure reading matter eod in daily and eowtf weekly. The Red Tar Worm Buster was to go in nonpareil leaded, 192I.T.thFth98weow3mo, and repeat; and the Baled Brain Food and Tolurock-andryecodliveroil was a six-inch electrotype to go in on third page, following pure original humorous matter, with six full head lines d&weod oct9tf, set in reading type similar to copy; these to be inserted between pure religious news, with no other advertising within four miles of the electro, or the reading notices.