CHAPTER IV.
Life In and On the Moon.
“I confess,” said I, “that you have demonstrated the possibility of a development among the articulates quite equal at least to that of mammals. You must have animals of some sort in your seas and lakes; what do you do with them?”
“We have some large soft bodied animals, something akin to your large mollusks and others having a cartilaginous frame, but we have no bony fishes. These animals are sometimes caught and turned into food products, the same as other organic refuse, but never eaten directly, as we are vegetarians. The amount of water surface on our planet is quite small compared with yours. The seas are narrow, but of immense depth. Indeed, some of them are known to have passages communicating directly through the planet and connecting the waters of the exterior continent, with those of the “Pocket”. The fluctuation of the tides takes place bi-monthly, with enormous force through these “bores.” When the moon is between the earth and sun the tide rises on the exterior continent, and when on the opposite side, it rises in the interior continent, the amount of the rise being very great in the neighborhood of these “bores,” but inconsiderable elsewhere.”
“Your climate I suppose is very different from ours—of course it must be.”
“Yes certainly, and the climate of the interior continent differs greatly from that of the exterior. On the polar regions of the exterior continent, we experience the extreme change of seasons, that occur on earth, from a very cold winter to a very hot summer—all in the space of about 29½ of your days or 709 hours. In the equatorial regions, however, the extremes are greatly tempered by the winds, which always blow toward the position of the sun, by the great evaporation that takes place during the day, and by the fact that the air of the equatorial belt is both higher and denser than that in the polar regions. In many cases, the upper air is charged with heavy clouds, that remain suspended all night or all winter, as you choose, and these prevent the land from becoming very cold.”
“Vegetation must come on very rapidly during your little summers,” I observed.
“Yes, it does. We have grasses that grow from the sown seed and mature their grains in eight days. But, we have others, whose habit requires that they be sown about midwinter, and they are harvested in midsummer. Other plants are annual, dropping their leaves soon after darkness sets in and putting forth new ones again as soon as daylight returns. Our food plants are, however, chiefly raised artificially in both the exterior and the interior continents. The farms are often immense buildings covering several acres and consisting of from ten to twenty stories, each story comprising a farm. As our space can thus be multiplied indefinitely, and as we can raise twelve or more crops a year in the same space, you see a single acre can be made to be equal to one or two hundred. It is not necessary to use this degree of economy of room in all cases, and so, many farms consist of but a single story on the ground, and often on the exterior continent only the suns rays are employed instead of electricity to furnish energy for the growth of the crop. Even this method gives us about 13 crops a year. The artificial methods are generally preferred, however, as they are far more certain and reliable. In the interior continent of course these methods prevail exclusively.”
“It seems strange,” said I, “that the spaces in the interior continent, should be great enough to hold any considerable population. We have on earth some large caves, but put them all together and they would not afford shelter for the inhabitants of a small city.”