Later on, another Frenchman (that nation took a great deal of notice of the moon), named Fontenelle, wrote his _Plurality of Worlds_, a masterpiece of his time; but science in its progress crushes even masterpieces! About 1835, a pamphlet, translated from the _New York American_, related that Sir John Herschel, sent to the Cape of Good Hope, there to make astronomical observations, had, by means of a telescope, perfected by interior lighting, brought the moon to within a distance of eighty yards.

Then he distinctly perceived caverns in which lived hippopotami, green mountains with golden borders, sheep with ivory horns, white deer, and inhabitants with membraneous wings like those of bats.

This treatise, the work of an American named Locke, had a very great success.

But it was soon found out that it was a scientific mystification, and Frenchmen were the first to laugh at it." "Laugh at an American!" cried J.T.

Maston; "but that's a _casus belli_!" "Be comforted, my worthy friend; before Frenchmen laughed they were completely taken in by our countryman.