1 14 THE BORDERLAND OF SCIENCE. 



others equally amusing, were described with marvellous 

 gravity, and with an attention to details reminding one 

 of the descriptions in c Gulliver's Travels.' One can 

 hardly wonder, then, that the narrative was received 

 in many quarters with unquestioning faith, nor, 

 perhaps, even at the simplicity with which (as Sir 

 John Herschel himself relates) well-meaning persons 

 planned measures for sending missionaries ' among the 

 poor benighted Lunarians.' 



Yet astronomers have long known full certainly that 

 no forms of life such as we are familiar with can exist 

 upon the moon. They know that if our satellite has 

 an atmosphere at all, that atmosphere must be so 

 limited in extent that no creatures we are acquainted 

 with could live in it. They know that she has no 

 oceans, seas, rivers, or lakes, neither clouds nor 

 rains, and that if she had there would be no winds 

 to waft moisture from place to place, or to cause the 

 clouds to drop fatness upon the lunar fields. They 

 know also that the moon's surface is subjected alter- 

 nately to a cold far more intense than that which 

 binds our arctic regions in everlasting frost, and to 

 a heat compared with which the fierce noon of a 

 tropical day is as the freshness of a spring morning. 

 They search over the lunar disc for the signs of 

 volcanic action only, feeling well assured that no traces 

 of the existence of living creatures will ever be 

 detected in that desolate orb. 



But with Mars the case is far otherwise. All that 

 we have learned respecting this charming planet leads 



