Long did the travellers, whom such a sight could never weary, admire the splendours of Tycho. Their projectile, saturated with luminous gleams in the double irradiation of sun and moon, must have appeared like an incandescent globe. They had passed suddenly from excessive cold to intense heat. Nature was thus preparing them to become Selenites. Become Selenites! That idea brought up once more the question of the habitability of the moon. After what they had seen, could the travellers solve it? Would they decide for or against it? Michel Ardan persuaded his two friends to form an opinion, and asked them directly if they thought that men and animals were represented in the lunar world. Illustration: A VIOLENT CONTRACTION OF THE LUNAR CRUST. "I think that we can answer," said Barbicane; "but according to my idea the question ought not to be put in that form. I ask it to be put differently." "Put it your own way," replied Michel. "Here it is," continued Barbicane. "The problem is a double one, and requires a double solution. Is the moon _habitable?_ Has the moon ever been _inhabitable?_" "Good!" replied Nicholl. "First let us see whether the moon is habitable." "To tell the truth, I know nothing about it," answered Michel. "And I answer in the negative," continued Barbicane. "In her actual state, with her surrounding atmosphere certainly very much reduced, her seas for the most part dried up, her insufficient supply of water restricted, vegetation, sudden alterations of cold and heat, her days and nights of 354 hours; the moon does not seem habitable to me, nor does she seem propitious to animal development, nor sufficient for the wants of existence as we understand it." "Agreed," replied Nicholl. "But is not the moon habitable for creatures differently organized from ourselves?" "That question is more difficult to answer, but I will try; and I ask Nicholl if _motion_ appears to him to be a necessary result of _life_, whatever be its organization?" "Without a doubt!" answered Nicholl. "Then, my worthy companion, I would answer that we have observed the lunar continent at a distance of 500 yards at most, and that nothing seemed to us to move on the moon's surface. The presence of any kind of life would have been betrayed by its attendant marks, such as divers buildings, and even by ruins. And what have we seen? Everywhere and always the geological works of nature, never the work of man. If, then, there exist representatives of the animal kingdom on the moon, they must have fled to those unfathomable cavities which the eye cannot reach; which I cannot admit, for they must have left traces of their passage on those plains which the atmosphere must cover, however slightly raised it may be. These traces are nowhere visible. There remains but one hypothesis, that of a living race to which motion, which is life, is foreign." "One might as well say, living creatures which do not live," replied Michel.