wise across to some friend who had extracted the nutriment from
those scattered around him.' However, the lunar men are not on the whole
particularly interesting beings according to this account. 'So far as we
could judge, they spent their happy hours in collecting various fruits
in the woods, in eating, flying, bathing, and loitering about the
summits of precipices.' One may say of them what Huxley is reported to
have said of the spirits as described by spiritualists, that no student
of science would care to waste his time inquiring about such a stupid
set of people.

Such are the more interesting and characteristic portions of a
narrative, running in the original to forty or fifty large octavo pages.
In its day the story attracted a good deal of notice, and, even when
every one had learned the trick, many were still interested in a
_brochure_ which was so cleverly conceived and had deceived so many. To
this day the lunar hoax is talked of in America, where originally it had
its chief--or, one may rather say, its only real--success as a hoax. It
reached England too late to deceive any but those who were unacquainted
with Herschel's real doings, and no editors of public journals, I
believe, gave countenance to it at all. In America, on the contrary,
many editors gave the narrative a distinguished place in their columns.
Some indeed expressed doubts, and others followed the safe course of the
'Philadelphia Inquirer,' which informed its readers that 'after an
attentive perusal of the whole story they could decide for themselves;'
adding that, 'whether true or false, the narrative is written with
consummate ability and possesses intense interest.' But others were more
credulous. According to the 'Mercantile Advertiser' the story carried
'intrinsic evidence of being an authentic document.' The 'Albany Daily
Advertiser' had read the article 'with unspeakable emotions of pleasure
and astonishment.' The 'New York Times' announced that 'the writer (Dr.
Andrew Grant) displays the most extensive and accurate knowledge of
astronomy; and the description of Sir John's recently improved
instruments, the principle on which the inestimable improvements were
founded, the account of the wonderful discoveries in the moon, etc., all
are probable and plausible, and have an air of intense verisimilitude.'
The 'New Yorker' considered the discoveries 'of astounding interest,
creating a new era in astronomy and science generally.'[49]

In our