orn one day, only to die the next. As the anonymous author
of one of many South Sea Ballads wrote in his "Merry Remarks upon
Exchange Alley Bubbles":

Our greatest ladies hither come,
And ply in chariots daily;
Oft pawn their jewels for a sum
To venture in the Alley.

The meteoric rise in the price of shares in the moon-mountain project
of the Cacklogallinians is no greater than the actual rise in prices of
shares during the South Sea Bubble, when, between April and July, 1720,
shares rose from L120 to L1,020. The fluctuating market of the
Cacklogallinian 'Change, which responded to every rumor, follows
faithfully the actual situation in London in 1720; and the final crash
which shook Cacklogallinian foundations--subtly suggested by Brunt's
unwillingness to return and face the enraged multitude--is an echo of
the crash which shook England when the Bubble was pricked.

But its reflection of the economic background of the age is not the only
reason for the interest and importance of _A Voyage to Cacklogallinia_,
either in its generation or in our own. The little tale has its place in
the history of science, particularly in that movement of science which,
beginning with the "new astronomy" in the early seventeenth century,
was to produce one of the most important chapters in the history
of aviation.[5] So far as literature is concerned, _A Voyage to
Cacklogallinia_ belongs to the literary _genre_ of "voyages to the moon"
which from Lucian to H.G. Wells (even to modern "pulp magazines") have
enthralled human imagination. Yet while its fantasy looks back to
Lucian's Icaro-Menippus, who flew to the moon by using the wing of
a vulture and the wing of an eagle, its suggestion of the growing
scientific temper of modern times makes it much more than mere fantasy.
In the semilegendary history of Iran is to be found a tale, retold by
Firdausi in the _Shaknameh_, of Kavi Usan, who "essayed the sky To
outsoar angels" by fastening four eagles to his throne. The Iranian
motif was adopted in the romances of Alexander the Great and so passed
into European literature. The researches of Leonardo da Vinci upon the
muscles of birds and the principles of the flight of birds brought over
to the realm of science ideas long familiar in tale and legend. Francis
Bacon did not hesitate to suggest in his _Natural History_ (Experiment
886) that there are possibilities of human flight by the use of birds
and "advises others to think furthe