LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS 



surrounding them. Thus the depressions were there ready 

 formed, into which the waters of the earth, beginning as 

 rain and ending as rivers or lakes, could flow as into 

 reservoirs. On the whole scientific men incline to believe 

 that, according to a popular tradition, the Moon may 

 have been torn from the earth where the Pacific Ocean 

 now lies, and may have left that hollow behind it when it 

 went. 



Many people, scientific men and astronomers among 

 them, have imagined the possibilities of life on the Moon. 

 In his clever romance, The First Man on the Moon^ 

 Mr. H. G. Wells has gathered together all the more 

 reasoned speculations on the subject. They all turn on 

 one point Is there an atmosphere on the Moon which 

 would support life ? There are gases of some kind 

 on the Moon. There must be gases, for example, shut 

 up in the moon's rocks ; there may be gases in the 

 Moon^s interior. Mr. Wells imagined that there was a 

 good deal of gas inside the Moon ; indeed, he went so 

 far as to suppose that the Moon was partly hollow. 

 If it were we should perhaps be able to accept that 

 as an explanation of the fact that the Moon is, bulk for 

 bulk, considerably lighter than the earth, and is, in short, 

 rather lighter than we should expect it to be. If the 

 Moon were hollow there might be an atmosphere and 

 water inside it, and a race of beings might live there 

 in the underworld of the Moon. The "Selenites,"* as 

 Mr. Wells called them, would probably be not in the 

 least like human beings, though they might be immeasur- 

 ably more intelligent, because, seeing that the earth 



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