ner? For the sun's rays do not act upon the mediums which they pervade otherwise than by reflection and refraction; and those reflecting particles heated by this action, heat the matter of the æther which is involved with them. That matter is rarefied by the heat which it acquires, and be cause, by this rarefaction, the specific gravity with which it tended towards the sun before is diminished, it will ascend therefrom, and carry along with it the reflecting particles of which the tail of the comet is composed. But the ascent of the vapours is further promoted by their circumgyration about the sun, in consequence whereof they endeavour to recede from the sun, while the sun's atmosphere and the other matter of the heavens are either altogether quiescent, or are only moved with a slower circumgyration derived from the rotation of the sun. And these are the causes of the ascent of the tails of the comets in the neighbourhood of the sun, where their orbits are bent into a greater curvature, and the comets themselves are plunged into the denser and therefore heavier parts of the sun's atmosphere: upon which account they do then emit tails of an huge length; for the tails which then arise, retaining their own proper motion, and in the mean time gravitating towards the sun, must be revolved in ellipses about the sun in like manner as the heads are, and by that motion must always accompany the heads, and freely adhere to them. For the gravitation of the vapours towards the sun can no more force the tails to abandon the heads, and descend to the sun, than the gravitation of the heads can oblige them to fall from the tails. They must by their common gravity either fall together towards the sun, or be retarded together in their common ascent therefrom; and, therefore (whether from the causes already described, or from any others), the tails and heads of comets may easily acquire and freely retain any position one to the other, without disturbance or impediment from that common gravitation.
The tails, therefore, that rise in the perihelion positions of the comets will go along with their heads into far remote parts, and together with the heads will either return again from thence to us, after a long course of years, or rather will be there rarefied, and by degrees quite vanish away; for afterwards, in the descent of the heads towards the sun, new short tails will be emitted from the heads with a slow motion; and those tails by degrees will be augmented immensely, especially in such comets as in their perihelion distances descend as low as the sun's atmosphere; for all vapour in those free spaces is in a perpetual state of rarefaction and dilatation; and from hence it is that the tails of all comets are broader at their upper extremity than near their heads. And it is not unlikely but that the vapour, thus perpetually rarefied and dilated, may be at last dissipated and scattered through the whole heavens, and by little and little be attracted towards the planets by its gravity, and mixed with their atmosphere; for as the seas are absolutely necessary to the constitution of our earth, that
