ails of the huge fabric in which the lens and its reflectors were
set up, I must refer the curious reader to the pamphlet itself--not that
the presence of the "Dutch boors" alarms me at all, since we have plenty
of boors at home, and one gets used to them in the course of time, but
because the elaborate scientific description of the structure would
make most readers see "stars" in broad daylight before they get through.

I shall only go on to say that, by the 10th of January, everything was
complete, even to the two pillars "one hundred and fifty feet high!"
that sustained the lens. Operations then commenced forthwith, and so,
too, did the "special wonder" of the readers. It is a matter of
congratulation to mankind that the writer of the hoax, with an apology
(Heaven save the mark!) spared us Herschel's notes of "the Moon's
tropical, sidereal, and synodic revolutions," and the "phenomena of the
syzygies," and proceeded at once to the pith of the subject. Here came
in his grand stroke, informing the world of complete success in
obtaining a distinct view of objects in the moon "fully equal to that
which the unaided eye commands of terrestrial objects at the distance of
a hundred yards, affirmatively settling the question whether the
satellite be inhabited, and by what order of beings," "firmly
establishing a new theory of cometary phenomena," etc., etc. This
announcement alone was enough to take one's breath away, but when the
green marble shores of the Mare Nubium; the mountains shaped like
pyramids, and of the purest and most dazzling crystalized, wine-colored
amethyst, dotting green valleys skirted by "round-breasted hills;"
summits of the purest vermilion fringed with arching cascades and
buttresses of white marble glistening in the sun--when these began to be
revealed, the delight of our Luna-tics knew no bounds--and the whole
town went moon-mad! But even these immense pictures were surpassed by
the "lunatic" animals discovered. First came the "herds of brown
quadrupeds" very like a--no! not a whale, but a bison, and "with a tail
resembling that of the bos grunniens"--the reader probably understands
what kind of a "bos" that is, if he's apprenticed to a theatre in
midsummer with musicians on a strike; then a creature, which the
hoax-man naively declared "would be classed on earth as a monster"--I
rather think it would!--"of a bluish lead color, about the size of a
goat, with a head and a beard like him, and a single h