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Updated: June 29, 2025
Their paths, although more eccentric, are all contained in planes that nearly correspond with the planes of the planetary orbits, and they travel in these paths in the same general direction with their planetary brethren in every case. The planetoid comets of short period are Encke's, De Vico's, Brorsen's, D'Arrest's, Biela's, and Fage's.
They still remain unexplained; but it can scarcely be doubted that they are due to the action of the same energetic internal forces which reveal themselves in so many splendid and surprising cometary phenomena. Another question of singular interest was raised by Encke's acute inquiries into the movements and disturbances of the first known "comet of short period."
The fact that comets contract in approaching the sun had been noticed by Hevelius; Pingré admitted it with hesitating perplexity; the example of Encke's comet rendered it conspicuous and undeniable. On the 28th of October, 1828, the diameter of the nebulous matter composing this body was estimated at 312,000 miles.
Actuated, therefore, by the most honorable impulses, I gave these people fifteen dollars which I borrowed for that purpose from my most estimable neighbor, Mrs. Tiltman, upon the understanding that I should pay it back when I heard from "The Sidereal Torch," to which publication I had sent a carefully prepared essay on Encke's comet.
Plummer suggests, with some show of reason, that the capture of Encke's comet may be a feat due to Mercury. No great comet appeared between the "star" which presided at the birth of Napoleon and the "vintage" comet of 1811. The latter was first described by Flaugergues at Viviers, March 26, 1811; Wisniewski, at Neu-Tscherkask in Southern Russia, caught a final glimpse of it, August 17, 1812.
Perhaps, in his good nature, Milnes thought that Swinburne might find a friend in Stirling or Oliphant, but he could hardly have fancied Henry Adams rousing in him even an interest. Adams could no more interest Algernon Swinburne than he could interest Encke's comet. To Swinburne he could be no more than a worm.
But the ethereal substance long supposed to obstruct the movement of Encke's comet would there be nearly 2,000 times denser than at the perihelion of the smaller body, and must have exerted a conspicuous retarding influence. That none such could be detected seems to argue that no such medium exists. Further evidence of a decisive kind was not wanting on the question of identity.
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