without cracking; cannon balls cool without cracking. Too much stress has been laid on the great difference between the _nucleus_ and the _crust_: it is really impossible to say where one ends and the other begins. In fact, no theory explains satisfactorily anything regarding the present state of the Moon's surface. In fact, from the day that Galileo compared her clustering craters to 'eyes on a peacock's tail' to the present time, we must acknowledge that we know nothing more than we can actually see, not one particle more of the Moon's history than our telescopes reveal to our corporal eyes!" "In the lucid opinion of the honorable and learned gentleman who spoke last," said Ardan, "the Chair is compelled to concur. Therefore, as to the second question before the house for deliberation, _Has the Moon been ever inhabited?_ the Chair gets out of its difficulty, as a Scotch jury does when it has not evidence enough either way, by returning a solemn verdict of _Not Proven!_" "And with this conclusion," said Barbican, hastily rising, "of a subject on which, to tell the truth, we are unable as yet to throw any light worth speaking of, let us be satisfied for the present. Another question of greater moment to us just now is: where are we? It seems to me that we are increasing our distance from the Moon very decidedly and very rapidly." It was easy to see that he was quite right in this observation. The Projectile, still following a northerly course and therefore approaching the lunar equator, was certainly getting farther and farther from the Moon. Even at 30 deg. S., only ten degrees farther north than the latitude of _Tycho_, the travellers had considerable difficulty, comparatively, in observing the details of _Pitatus_, a walled mountain on the south shores of the _Mare Nubium_. In the "sea" itself, over which they now floated, they could see very little, but far to the left, on the 20th parallel, they could discern the vast crater of _Bullialdus_, 9,000 feet deep. On the right, they had just caught a glimpse of _Purbach_, a depressed valley almost square in shape with a round crater in the centre, when Ardan suddenly cried out: "A Railroad!" And, sure enough, right under them, a little northeast of _Purbach_, the travellers easily distinguished a long line straight and black, really not unlike a railroad cutting through a low hilly country. This, Barbican explained, was of course no railway, but a steep cliff, at least 1,000 feet high, casting a very deep shadow, and probably the result of the caving in of the surface on the eastern edge.