APPENDIX.
See [page 17], Mitchel Discovery.
The Reader will remember that the Professor stated that the alternating gravity currents—the secret of which the Lunarians so tightly gripped—could be applied only to metals and has no effect on organic substances. In order to get the use of these currents for moving or controlling such bodies, it must be acquired through the manipulation of the metals. Thus if a piece of metal be attached to a block of wood, according to the Professor, the greater quantity of the metal will control the movement. If a box be constructed of metal so as to hold non reversible materials of course they will share the movement of the metal.
The following account of the discovery by Professor Mitchell, taken from a paper of the period, is suggestive of a connection between that and the discovery by the Lunarians.
Sometime in the sixth decade of this century (19th) a very remarkable discovery was said to have been made by the celebrated astronomer, Prof. O. M. Mitchel, then of Cincinnati, and director of Dudley and Cincinnati Observatories. He discovered either a new metal or an amalgam, alloy or compound, which when formed into plates possessed the property of preventing the passage through it of the influence of gravitation. In short it effectually stopped the passage of the lines of force that constitute gravitation, so that if a cage or box were made of such material any solid body placed inside of it would lose its weight and not tend to fall. If a man were to get inside of such a box, he would find himself destitute of weight toward the ground. But if he should open the top of the box he would admit the influence of gravity from that direction, coming from the moon, planets or stars that might happen to be in that direction at the moment and it would at once commence to rise. Acting upon the obvious suggestions enforced by such experiments the Professor caused a cage to be built large enough to contain 4 or 5 persons, and in order to secure secrecy had it conveyed in pieces, together with all needed apparatus and stores, to a solitary and obscure circular hollow or depression in the valley of the Mississippi not far from Natchez, and called the Devil’s Punch-bowl. Here the cage was put together and the numerous openings in the plates on all sides covered by movable sliding lids of the same material, were carefully closed and secured, all the scientific apparatus, the provisions’ flasks of compressed air etc., were conveyed within, and lastly the voyagers themselves. By opening the ports in the direction of the moon they soon began to fall toward her. As they approached her, by a judicious manipulation of the sliding doors they were enabled to make a complete revolution around her. They did not land, reserving that adventure for another trip. On their return to earth they steadied themselves in a position some miles up, and allowed the earth to revolve under them until the Devils punch-bowl came directly beneath them, when they dropped into it. They dismantled and secreted their machine intending to return. Shortly after this the Civil war came on, during which Prof. Mitchel became a general in the service and died at Beaufort, South Carolina, October 30, 1862, and the secret of his discovery as I suppose died with him.
P. S.:—Notice! If any of the companions of Professor Mitchell on the above trip to the moon are still living they would greatly oblige the author by sending him their address.
Over Population. See [page 155].
Taking our stand in the future alongside of the men and women that will then be pressing their brains against the apparently insoluble problem of over-population, we will share their amazement at the insane panic that penetrated the American people of the 19th century to give away and on any terms to get rid of their magnificent domain and have it pass into the control and ownership of any undesirable bipeds that would take it as a gift. They acted as if they thought land was an encumbrance and something that was impoverishing and ruining the nation. If they had held out an exclusive welcome to the hardy and liberty loving people of the north of Europe, the stock that fought for liberty and independence in the first place, it would have been at least more rational. But under any conditions, why such a panic to fill up the country with people? Carlyle speaking of the prosperity of America 50 or 60 years ago said: “You may boast of your free institutions and your dimmocracy and all that, but America is prosperous, because you have a great deal of land for a very few people.”
He was right.
As long as land was abundant or rather as long as people were scarce, there was enough of the necessaries of life to give a competence and comfort to all. When the country is filled up there is no longer the profusion that nature set out for us at first. The land that we ought to have reserved for our children, educated in our ways and inheriting our ideas is given to foreigners, and our own are disinherited. The miraculous insanity of this, is that we view this prospect with more than complacency and are anxious to help it along. We not only crowd the country with immigrants, many of whom we are obliged to class as objectionable, but we encourage a double rate of increase by the Apotheosis of the parents of large families, as if fecundity were a merit or there were any danger of “race suicide”. The danger is greater that nature out of patience with our colossal stupidity will visit homicide on the whole race, just as she has so often done on parts of it.
The danger the Professor sees ahead is no dream. Neither is the final remedy he so confidently proposes. Even now, are some of these vital questions being solved, and along the Professor’s lines. We shall learn to begin our study of sociology with the Bees and the Ants; older races than we are, and in practical hard sense far ahead.
Many people do not know that we have gone to sleep directly over a weak spot in the Earth’s crust, that although it gives many warnings by growlings and grumblings, it fails to wake us up. We turn over and half awake, we mutter—it isn’t going to be much of a quake I guess. If some crank does not succeed in sounding the alarm loud enough and none but a crank will be likely to sound it at all, the citizen peers out—“’tis nothing but that crank,” he says, and he rolls over as if he thought it better to be overwhelmed by a quake than saved by a crank. So much the worse if even the crank cannot save us.
The questions that we seem desirous to push aside are the most persistent in pressing for solution. What is the aim of the aimless multitudes that swarm to our shores? What do any of us live for? To live? Is living worth it, if it cannot be done in comfort? The old theological query shows up—“What is the chief end of man”? As they answered; it was nothing at all to man and of paltry insignificance to anybody else.
Worker Sex. See [page 182].
I inferred from a remark the Professor dropped that he regarded the present human race as gradually developing a third or worker sex from those present, especially the female; and this without any artificial effort. It is evident to the most superficial observation that the women are pushing ahead into occupations that a few years ago were monopolized by the men. The men, are being dispossessed of their employments, and the women usurp their places. Women thus employed and self supporting, cannot reasonably be expected to see anything very alluring in a marriage that presents a prospect to the woman of being obliged to support a husband and children as well as herself. This condition of things will certainly cause a decline in matrimony, has already done it in fact; amongst the women of the greatest enterprise.
See [page 199], Abolition of the Stomach.
The Professor’s plan of the abortion or extinction of the digestive apparatus is in direct continuance of evolution. There are many cases in nature in which a process or system is abandoned or superseded by a different one, and new organs and new functions may totally displace others. For example the Amphibians are supplied with gills, and are able to live continuously under water, but they begin to live part of the time in the air, and lungs are developed which at first begin to do part of the office of aerating the blood of the animal, and gradually assume the whole of the function, the gills becoming atrophied and abolished.
The prognostication of the Professor in regard to the metamorphosis of the digestive apparatus is neither wild nor extravagant. The unborn infant lives on food digested by its mother and introduced into its system. After its birth the food is digested and supplied by its own internal laboratory, instead of that of the mother. It might just as well be supplied by a chemical laboratory. The only essential condition is that the food be perfectly assimilable by the tissues and without any surplus of substances not required. The transfer of the food supply from the circulation of the mother to its production by the chemist is reached by several stages or changes. First it is from the mothers circulation supported by exterior supplies of food. Next it is furnished by the circulation of the infant supported by exterior supplies; commonly beginning with the natural lacteal secretion, then after a time the demand changes from this to stronger food; also to acquired habits in taste the use of stimulants, narcotics etc. Thus nature changes the organism in the most radical way to keep it in conformity with conditions that are necessary for its support, and likewise changes its environment to furnish the conditions with which conformity is essential. If we consider how great the changes are, in the structure and functions of one body during the living of one life; we cannot feel surprised at the changes in human anatomy that we know to have occurred in the long ages up which we have so laboriously toiled, nor at the further changes which the foresight of the Professor points out to us, and for which he helps himself to such a prodigal allowance of time. The changes we have met and passed are far greater than those assumed for the future. As to our evolution we are certainly not yet half through.
See [page 225], Notes on Mars.
The following notes of the conditions of Mars and its tiny satellites are furnished by our mundane astronomers, and will give an idea of the problems that demanded solution by the Lunarians in their famous contract. Gravity on Mars is four-tenths as much as on the Earth. The atmospheric pressure is two and a quarter pounds per square inch against 15 pounds on the Earth. The climate of the poles is much milder than the same regions of Earth, although there are heavy falls of snow. In June and July 1892, 1,600,000 square miles of snow melted off in the southern zone of Mars. April 9, 1890, 3,000,000 square miles of snow fell. Ice is not formed anywhere except close to the poles in winter time. The channels are connected from sea to sea. They are 60 miles wide and from 3,000 to 4,000 miles long in a straight line. There are many of the channels that are duplicates, the duplicate being parallel with and 200 to 400 miles from the main channel. There are from 7 to 20 of these duplicate channels. Most of the surface of Mars is boggy syrtis, neither sea nor good dry land. Clouds float 20 miles high—4 times as high as on Earth.
The year of Mars is equal to 687 of our days. His day is 24 hours and 37 minutes. His diameter is about 4,500 miles; his distance from the sun 145,000,000 of miles; his nearest position to the Earth 35,000,000 miles.
The moon Phobos is 8 to 9 miles in diameter. It is 3,760 miles from the surface of Mars, and revolves around him in 7 hours and 39 minutes, at a rate of 79.6 per minute. It rises in the west and sets in the east. Its orbit is 36,486 miles. Deimos rises in the east and sets in the west, so to Mars, does the Earth, Sun and Moon. The diameter of Deimos 6 to 7 miles, distance from the surface of Mars 12,500 miles and his revolution is performed in 30 hours and 18 minutes, rate 50 miles a minute.