Compare the course which Ovid tells us Phaëton pursued through the constellations, past the Great Serpent and Boötes, and close to the venomous Scorpion, with the orbit of Donati’s comet in 1858, as given in Schellen’s great work.[1]

[1.  “Spectrum Analysis,” p. 391.]

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COURSE OF DONATI’S COMET

The path described by Ovid shows that the comet came from the north part of the heavens; and this agrees with what we know of the Drift; the markings indicate that it came from the north.

The horses now range at large; “they go through

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the air of an unknown region; . . . they rush on the stars fixed in the sky”; they approach the earth.

“The moon, too, wonders that her brother’s horses run lower than her own, and the scorched clouds send forth smoke, As each region is most elevated it is caught by the flames, and cleft, it makes vast chasms, its moisture being carried away.  The grass grows pale; the trees, with their foliage, are burned up, and the dry, standing corn affords fuel for its own destruction.  But I am complaining of trifling ills. Great cities perish, together with their fortifications, and the flames turn whole nations into ashes; woods, together with mountains, are on fire.  Athos burns, and the Cilician Taurus, and Tmolus, and Œta, and Ida, now dry but once most famed for its springs, and Helicon, the resort of the virgin Muses, and Hæmus, not yet called Œagrian. Ætna burns intensely with redoubled flames, and Parnassus, with its two summits, and Eryx, and Cynthus, and Orthrys, and Rhodope, at length to be despoiled of its snows, and Mimas, and Dindyma, and Mycale, and Cithæron, created for the sacred rites.  Nor does its cold avail even Scythia; Caucasus is on fire, and Ossa with Pindus, and Olympus, greater than them both, and the lofty Alps, and the cloud-bearing Apennines.

“Then, indeed, Phaëton beholds the world see on fire on all sides, and he can not endure heat so great, and he inhales with his mouth scorching air, as though from a deep furnace, and perceives his own chariot to be on fire.  And neither is he able now to bear the ashes and the emitted embers; and on every side he is involved in a heated smoke.  Covered with a pitchy darkness, he knows not whither he is going, nor where he is, and is hurried away at the pleasure of the winged steeds.  They believe that it was then that the nations of the Æthiopians contracted their black hue, the blood being attracted. into the surface of the body.  Then was Libya” (Sahara?) “made dry by the heat, the moisture being carried off; then with disheveled hair the Nymphs lamented the springs and the lakes.  Bœotia bewails Dirce, Argos Amymone, and Ephyre the waters of Pirene.  Nor do rivers that

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