SCIENTIFIC DREAMS OF THE PAST. 363 



Phonography is thus described in the April number, 1632, of 

 the Courier Veritable, a little monthly publication in which novel 

 fancies were frequently aired : " Captain Vosterloch has returned 

 from his voyage to the southern lands which he started on two 

 years and a half ago, by order of the States-General. He tells us 

 among other things that in passing through a strait below Magel- 

 lan's, he landed in a country where Nature has furnished men with 

 a kind of sponges which hold sounds and articulations as our 

 sponges hold liquids. So, when they wish to dispatch a message 

 to a distance, they speak to one of the sponges, and then send it to 

 their friends. They, receiving the sponges, take them up gently 

 and press out the words that have been spoken into them, and 

 learn this by admirable means all that their correspondents desire 

 them to know." 



Cyrano de Bergerac, in his Histoire comique des Etats et Em- 

 pires de la Lune, whose first edition is dated as early as 1650, is still 

 more precise. He relates that the genius that guided him to our 

 satellite gave him for his entertainment some of the books of the 

 country. These books are inclosed in boxes. " On opening the 

 box I found inside a concern of metal, something like one of our 

 watches, full of curious little springs and minute machinery. It 

 was really a book, but a wonderful book that has no leaves or let- 

 ters ; a book, for the understanding of which the eyes are of no 

 use only the ears are necessary. When any one wishes to read, 

 he winds up the machine with its great number of nerves of all 

 kinds, and turns the pointer to the chapter he wishes to hear, 

 when there come out, as if from the mouth of a man or of an in- 

 strument of music, the distinct and various sounds which serve 

 the Great Lunarians as the expression of language." A few 

 pages before this, Cyrano speaks of transparent globes, that serve 

 for lighting, in which a non-heating lamp has been placed. 



We are next told about microbes : " Figure the universe as a 

 great animal ; the stars that are worlds as other great animals 

 which serve as worlds to other people like. us, our horses, etc., and 

 that we, in our turn, are like worlds in respect to certain animals 

 still incomparably smaller than we, as are certain worms, fleas, 

 and flesh- worms ; that these are the earth to others still more im- 

 perceptible ; and that just as we appear, each individual of us, a 

 great world to these little people, it may be also that our flesh and 

 our blood are only a tissue of little animals which maintain them- 

 selves, lend us motion by theirs and let themselves be led blindly 

 by our will which serves them as a coachman, lead us in our turn, 

 and produce altogether the action which we call life. Does not 

 the itch prove what I am saying ? Is the worm that causes it 

 anything but one of these little animals which has deprived itself 

 of civil society to constitute itself a tyrant of its country ? That 



