It can hardly be considered essential to the right comprehension of scientific experiments that a picturesque account should be given of the place where the experiments were made. The history of the wonderful Australian discovery opens nevertheless as follows:--"Many of the readers of the _Brisbane Courier_ who know Sydney Harbour will remember the long inlet opposite the heads known as Middle Harbour, which, in a succession of land-locked reaches, stretches away like a chain of lakes for over twenty miles. On one of these reaches, made more than ordinarily picturesque by the bold headlands that drop almost sheer into the water, stand, on about an acre of grassy flat, fringed by white beach on which the clear waters of the harbour lap, two low brick buildings. Here, in perfect seclusion, and with a careful avoidance of publicity, is being conducted an experiment, the success of which, now established beyond any doubt, must have a wider effect upon the future prosperity of Australia than any project ever contemplated." It was precisely in this tone that the author of the "Lunar Hoax"[71] opened his account of those "recent discoveries in astronomy which will build an imperishable monument to the age in which we live, and confer upon the present generation of the human race a proud distinction through all future time." "It has been poetically said," he remarks--though probably he would have found some difficulty in saying where or by whom this had been said,--"that the stars of heaven are the hereditary regalia of man, as the intellectual sovereign of the animal creation; he may now fold the zodiac around him with a loftier consciousness of his mental supremacy" (a sublime idea, irresistibly suggestive of the description which an American humourist gave of a certain actor's representation of the death of Richard III., "he wrapped the star-spangled banner round him, and died like the son of a hoss").