ly
distinct and even vivid representation of _basaltic rock_. Its colour
was a greenish brown; and the width of the columns, as defined by their
interstices on the canvas, was invariably twenty-eight inches. No
fracture whatever appeared in the mass first presented; but in a few
seconds a shelving pile appeared, of five or six columns' width, which
showed their figure to be hexagonal, and their articulations similar to
those of the basaltic formation at Staffa. This precipitous cliff was
profusely covered with a dark red flower, precisely similar, says Dr.
Grant, to the Papaver Rhoeus, or Rose Poppy, of our sublunary
cornfields; and this was the first organic production of nature in a
foreign world ever revealed to the eyes of men.'

It would be wearisome to go through the whole series of observations
thus fabled, and only a few of the more striking features need be
indicated. The discoveries are carefully graduated in interest. Thus we
have seen how, after recognising basaltic formations, the observers
discovered flowers: they next see a lunar forest, whose 'trees were of
one unvaried kind, and unlike any on earth except the largest kind of
yews in the English churchyards.' (There is an American ring in this
sentence, by the way, as there is in one, a few lines farther on, where
the narrator having stated that by mistake the observers had the Sea of
Clouds instead of a more easterly spot in the field of view, proceeds to
say: 'However, the moon was a free country, and we not as yet attached
to any particular province.') Next a lunar ocean is described, 'the
water nearly as blue as that of the deep sea, and breaking in large
white billows upon the strand, while the action of very high tides was
quite manifest upon the face of the cliffs for more than a hundred
miles.' After a description of several valleys, hills, mountains and
forests, we come to the discovery of animal life. An oval valley
surrounded by hills, red as the purest vermilion, is selected as the
scene. 'Small collections of trees, of every imaginable kind, were
scattered about the whole of this luxuriant area; and here our
magnifiers blessed our panting hopes with specimens of conscious
existence. In the shade of the woods we beheld brown quadrupeds having
all the external characteristics of the bison, but more diminutive than
any species of the bos genus in our natural history.' Then herds of
agile creatures like antelopes are described, 'abounding on the