Sometimes a greenish tint was seen upon
its surface, which might have been taken for vegetation, but it was
thought not improbably to be a reflection from the vast forests of South
America. The ancients had a fancy, some of them, that the face of the
moon was a mirror in which the seas and shores of the earth were imaged.
Now we know the geography of the side toward us about as well as that of
Asia, better than that of Africa. The Astronomer showed them one of the
common small photographs of the moon. He assured them that he had
received letters inquiring in all seriousness if these alleged lunar
photographs were not really taken from a peeled orange. People had got
angry with him for laughing at them for asking such a question. Then he
gave them an account of the famous moon-hoax which came out, he believed,
in 1835. It was full of the most bare-faced absurdities, yet people
swallowed it all, and even Arago is said to have treated it seriously as
a thing that could not well be true, for Mr. Herschel would have
certainly notified him of these marvellous discoveries. The writer of it
had not troubled himself to invent probabilities, but had borrowed his
scenery from the Arabian Nights and his lunar inhabitants from Peter
Wilkins.
After this lecture the Capitalist stepped forward and applied his eye to
the lens.
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