Dr. Herschel has classified not less than thirty-eight species of forest trees and nearly twice this number of plants, found in this tract alone, which are widely different to those found in more equatorial latitudes. Of animals he classified nine species of mammalia and five of oviparia. Among the former is a small kind of reindeer, the elk, the moose, the horned bear, and the biped beaver.
The last resembles the beaver of the earth in every other respect than its destitution of a tail and its invariable habit of walking upon only two feet. It carries its young in its arms, like a human being, and walks with an easy, gliding motion. Its huts are constructed better and higher than those of many tribes of human savages, and from the appearance of smoke in nearly all of them there is no doubt of its being acquainted with the use of fire.
The largest lake described was two hundred and sixty-six miles long and one hundred and ninety-three wide, shaped like the Bay of Bengal, and studded with volcanic islands. One island in a large bay was pinnacled with quartz crystals as brilliant as fire. Near by roamed zebras three feet high. Golden and blue pheasants strutted about. The beach was covered with shell-fish. Dr. Grant did not say whether the fire-making beavers ever held a clambake there.
The Sun of Friday, August 28, 1835, was a notable issue. Not yet two years old, Mr. Day’s newspaper had the satisfaction of announcing that it had achieved the largest circulation of any daily in the world. It had, it said, 15,440 regular subscribers in New York and 700 in Brooklyn, and it sold 2,000 in the streets and 1,220 out of town—a grand total of 19,360 copies, as against the 17,000 circulation of the London Times. The double-cylinder Napier press in the building at Nassau and Spruce Streets—the corner where the Tribune is to-day, and to which the Sun had moved on August 3—had to run ten hours a day to satisfy the public demand. People waited with more or less patience until three o’clock in the afternoon to read about the moon.
That very issue contained the most sensational instalment of all the moon series, for through that mystic chain which included Dr. Grant, the supplement of the Edinburgh Journal of Science, the “medical gentleman immediately from Scotland,” and the Sun, public curiosity as to the presence of human creatures on the orb of night was satisfied at last. The astronomers were looking upon the cliffs and crags of a new part of the moon:
But whilst gazing upon them in a perspective of about half a mile we were thrilled with astonishment to perceive four successive flocks of large winged creatures, wholly unlike any kind of birds, descend with a slow, even motion from the cliffs on the western side and alight upon the plain. They were first noticed by Dr. Herschel, who exclaimed:
“Now gentlemen, my theories against your proofs, which you have often found a pretty even bet, we have here something worth looking at. I was confident that if ever we found beings in human shape it would be in this longitude, and that they would be provided by their Creator with some extraordinary powers of locomotion. First, exchange for my Number D.”
This lens, being soon introduced, gave us a fine half-mile distance; and we counted three parties of these creatures, of twelve, nine, and fifteen in each, walking erect toward a small wood near the base of the eastern precipices. Certainly they were like human beings, for their wings had now disappeared, and their attitude in walking was both erect and dignified.
Having observed them at this distance for some minutes, we introduced lens H.z., which brought them to the apparent proximity of eighty yards—the highest clear magnitude we possessed until the latter end of March, when we effected an improvement in the gas burners.
About half of the first party had passed beyond our canvas; but of all the others we had a perfectly distinct and deliberate view. They averaged four feet in height, were covered, except on the face, with short and glossy copper-colored hair, and had wings composed of a thin membrane, without hair, lying snugly upon their backs, from the top of the shoulders to the calves of the legs.