hers.]

Omens of battle, 1547.

Deer and warriors, July 19, 1550.

Cavalry, and a bloody branch crossing the sun, June 11, 1554.]

Our fathers saw many other prodigies in the skies; their descendants,
less credulous, can study the facsimile reproduced in Fig. 51, of the
drawings published in the year 1557 by Conrad Lycosthenes in his curious
Book of Prodigies.

So, too, it is asserted that Charles V renounced the jurisdiction of his
Estates, which were so vast that "the Sun never slept upon them,"
because he was terrified by the comet of 1556 which burned in the skies
with an alarming brilliancy, into passing the rest of his days in prayer
and devotion.

It is certain that comets often exhibit very strange characteristics,
but the imagination that sees in them such dramatic figures must indeed
be lively. In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance these were swords of
fire, bloody crosses, flaming daggers, etc., all horrible objects ready
to destroy our poor human race!

At the time of the Romans, Pliny made some curious distinctions between
them: "The Bearded Ones let loose their hair like a majestic beard; the
Javelin darts forth like an arrow; if the tail is shorter and ends in a
point, it is called the Sword; this is the palest of all the Comets; it
shines like a sword, without rays; the Plate or Disk is named in
conformity with its figure; its color is amber, the Barrel is actually
shaped like a barrel, as it might be in smoke, with light streaming
through it; the Horn imitates the figure of a horn erected in the sky,
and the Lamp that of a burning flame; the Equine represents a horse's
mane, shaken violently with a circular motion. There are bristled
comets; these resemble the skins of beasts with the fur on them, and are
surrounded by a nebulosity. Lastly, the tails of certain comets have
been seen to menace the sky in the form of a lance."

These hairy orbs that appear in all directions, and whose trajectories
are sometimes actually perpendicular to the plane of the ecliptic,
appear to obey no regular law. Even in the seventeenth century the
perspicacious Kepler had not divined their true character, seeing in
them, like most of his contemporaries, emanations from the earth, a sort
of vapor, losing itself in space. These erratic orbs could not be
assimilated with the other members of our grand solar family where,
generally speaking, everything goes on in regular order.

And even in our own times, have we no