in a year. Retaining the same extravagant estimate of five hundred tons a day, it appears that the earth's diameter would grow an inch in about one hundred millions of years, and that her distance from the sun would be reduced about eighty-three feet in a million years, in consequence of the resistance experienced in moving through the meteoric swarms.

It would not, however, be just to the general reader to dismiss the subject without fair notice that some most eminent astronomers hold views at variance with those above expressed. The late Professor Peirce maintained to the end that the heat of the sun is chiefly due to the impact of meteors, and also that the earth itself receives as much heat from meteors as from the sun, a necessary result if the solar heat is really so produced. Of course, we have no space to discuss the matter here, and must be content with merely saying that the quantity of matter which falls upon the earth, if his idea is correct, ought to be easily noticeable, amounting to about fifty tons a day on each square mile. It involves also serious difficulties in the planetary theory.

So far as human beings are concerned, the most important question connected with our subject is whether anything is to be feared from comets, as a consequence either of collisions with the earth or of their fall into the sun. It may be said, just as of the stars before, first, that cometary collisions, either with sun or earth, must be very rare occurrences; and, secondly, that they are practically certain to happen sometime or other. Babinet computed, on the one hand, that a comet would strike the earth on the average about once in fifteen million years; on the other, we know at least three comets whose orbits cut the earth's path so closely that, if they should ever reach the crossing at the same time as the earth, a collision must occur. These comets are known as Biela's, Tempel's, followed by the Leonid meteors in its train, and the comet of 1862, which precedes the Perseids. One of the three, however (Biela's), has probably ceased to exist as a comet, and it is quite possible that the other two may vanish in the same way before we meet them.

As to cometary encounters with the sun, no comet has yet been known actually to strike the sun, but several have grazed very near it. The great comet of last year brushed through the corona, and came within three hundred thousand miles of the photosphere, and there is no assignable reason why some other comet should not actually pierce it.

As to the consequences of a comet's collision with the earth,

it is impossible to predict them with scientific certainty; probably, however, they would be insignificant. We know absolutely that the whole quantity of matter in a comet (technically, its "mass") is extremely small compared with that of the earth; but just how small no one can say. It is impossible to contradict authoritatively either the man who says he could carry a comet home in his pocket if properly packed, or one who asserts that a comet's nucleus is equivalent to an iron ball one hundred miles in diameter. An attempt has been made to get at the density of the central nucleus on the assumption that it holds to itself the enormous volume of the head and envelopes by its gravitational attraction, as if the surrounding nebulosity were an atmosphere in equilibrium around the nucleus; but the assumption is more than doubtful, and the derived conclusion, of course, is of little value. It seems, on the whole, more probable that a comet is throughout only a cloud of dust and vapor- a mere smoke-wreath-than that there is at the center any solid kernel of preponderant mass.

If a comet really has at the center any great mass of stone or iron, or even a close-packed swarm of aerolites weighing a ton or two apiece, collision with it would of course be a most serious matter, spreading devastation and conflagration possibly over half the globe at once; not amounting, probably, to anything like a destruction of the world, but far more disastrous than any earthquake or volcanic eruption. It is far more likely, however, that the encounter with a comet would be entirely harmless,simply a most magnificent and brilliant shower of shooting-stars lasting for an hour or two,-a phenomenon which one might well desire to see.

As for the effect of a collision between a comet and the sun, in respect to which there has been much disquieting speculation of late, the probability is that we on the earth should never know it, unless we happened to be expressly watching the event. a few minutes, just as the nucleus was piercing the photosphere, there might be some unusual flash of brilliance and a fine outburst of solar prominences, followed, perhaps, and very probably, by intense magnetic and auroral disturbances on the earth; but the main thermal transformation of the impinging energy would be effected far below the visible surface of the sun, and would result merely in a slight expansion of its bulk, far too slight to be detected by terrestrial astronomers.

C. A. YOUNG.

THE SAINT PATRICK MYTH.

NEAR the close of 1882, a Bollandist, groping amid ancient MSS. in the Royal Library at Brussels, turned up a treasure precious in his eyes as the great Australian nugget. This was the full text of the "Life of St. Patrick," by Muirchu Maccumachtheni, which he compiled at the suggestion of Aedh, Bishop of Sletty, who died in 698. This is the earlier of two ancient narratives contained in the "Book of Armagh," compiled about the year 807. The other, Tirechan's, was already complete. The difference between these two earliest Lives of the Saint is that Tirechan relates precisely that Patrick received his commission to instruct the Irish from Pope Celestine. Muirchu does not mention the pope. It has been a theory that the lost part of the "Book of Armagh" contained some reference to Patrick's visit to Rome and his commission by the pope. That, however, has now been set at rest: there is no such reference in the recovered text. The fifth of Muirchu's chapters is headed, "De inventione sancti Germani in Gallii"; and it states that Patrick, having traveled per gallicas Alpes ad extremum, found a home with Germanus, at whose feet he sat, as Paul at the feet of Gamaliel, when, in a vision, he was directed by his angel, Victoricus, to go to Ireland. For that mission he was consecrated by Amatorex, by whom may be meant Amator, predecessor of Germanus (St. Germain), then Bishop of Auxerre. This also is probably fictitious, as we shall see; but it may be noted here that in the eighth century the only thread by which Patrick was connected with the Church of Rome was an alleged consecration by a Gallican bishop. But, the reader will exclaim, of what earthly importance to any human being can it be, whether an Irish bishop of the fifth century was ordained by Pope Celestine, or Amatorex, or the angel Victoricus, or neither? Be patient, O reader, and you may find hereabouts the germ, not

only of much interesting Irish history, but of the phenomenal results of the last papal circular concerning Parnell and his League.

But did Patrick ever exist? This cannot be determined with absolute certainty. The grounds of doubt are as follows: All authorities agree that Palladius was the first Christian missionary among the Irish; that he was ordained for that work by Pope Celestine; that he was a friend of Germanus, and that he was styled Patricius in the Roman Martyrology, his day being March 16, the day before that of the received St. Patrick, when he (Palladius) is said to have died at Auvergne. The words are, "Arvernis depositio S. Patricii episcopi." No contemporary ecclesiastical writer mentions Patrick, though nearly all mention Palladius. The most remarkable instance of silence is that of Bede, who mentions the missions of Palladius, Ninian, and Columba, but says nothing whatever of Patrick. That so minute and exact a historian, writing in the early eighth century, should not mention even the name of Patrick, has not been explained. Even in the writings of St. Columbanus, who flourished in the century after Patrick, the name of the latter does not occur. There is no mention of any person, supposed to be an individual Patrick, earlier than about two hundred years after he is said to have died. In a letter written by Cummian to Segienus, abbot of Iona, in the year 634, concerning the proper time of Easter, he speaks of the cycle "introduced into use by our pope, St. Patricius"; and Adamnan, a little later, writes of "Maucta, a pilgrim from Britain, a holy man, a disciple of St. Patricius, the bishop." Skene ("Celtic Scotland," ii., p. 17) accepts these as references to the St. Patrick, and as "sufficient to prove his existence"; but, notwithstanding such a weighty indorsement, skepticism will not fail to remember that Patricius ("our pope," as Cummian calls him) was the Roman title given to Palladius, and that it was borne by several others in the north. Tirechan himself, in the "Book of Armagh," speaks of the first Patricius and the second Patricius-i. e., Palladius and Patrick. Patrick is, of course, no more a personal name than Cardinal. Muirchu (Brussels text) says that Patricius had four names-"Sochet, quando natus est; Contice, quando servivit; Mavonius, quando legit; Patricius, quando ordinatus est." The first of these names is said to be British, and to mean "the god of war"; so that the baptismal name of Patricius is almost as suspicious as his ordination

name. It is a curious coincidence, if nothing more, that St. Martin, whose nephew Patrick is said to have been, appears to have received his name from "the god of war" (Mars).

Despite these and other grounds of doubt, the probabilities are thrown in favor of the existence of an individual St. Patrick by signs of genuineness in the two compositions claiming to have been written by himself. These are his "Confession " and the "Epistle to Coroticus." The "Confessio," which alone is important to this inquiry, was transcribed into the "Book of Armagh" from a manuscript then so old that the transcriber's difficulties in deciphering it frequently appear. This, of course, was more than three centuries after Patrick's death; but its authenticity is accepted by Skene, Todd, and others, mainly because of its freedom from the miraculous and extravagant incidents which at a later period accumulated about the name of Patrick. There is some superstition in it, but no statement of anything impossible; the style is simple, the latinity rude. Oudin attacked the authenticity of the document on the ground that no pontiff would have been so stupid as to send forth a missionary who could only write such barbarous Latin; but, as Todd well remarks, this is one of the strongest arguments in favor of the "Confessio," which is quite ignorant of any pontifical commission to Patrick. The contents of this Confession are briefly that he (Patrick) was the son of Calpurnius, a deacon, who had a small farm in the village of Bonaven of Tabernia; his father being a "decurio," or provincial Roman magistrate. In his sixteenth year he (Patrick) was taken captive and brought to Hiberio with many thousands. In Hiberio (as he calls Ireland) he was employed to tend cattle daily; he prayed much, often saying a hundred prayers in a day and almost as many at night. One night, in a dream, a voice said to him, "Thy fasting is well; thou shalt soon return to thy country." In a second dream, the same voice told that the ship was ready, but two hundred miles away (cc. milia passus). He then fled from his master, with whom he had been in slavery six years. He found the ship, and was roughly refused passage; but while he was praying, the sailors called him, and he was taken on board. They were three days at sea, and afterward twenty-eight days "wandering in a desert." Their provisions having run short, his companions said, "Thy God is great and almighty; why canst thou not pray to Him for us, for we perish of hunger, and no inhabitants are