Associated with the lunar story.

Still Pickering's vegetable views are tame

Contrasted with Professor Goddard's aim;

For he, as from the daily Press we learn,

An obvious plagiarist of good Jules Verne,

Would have us build a Bertha fat enough

To send a charge of high explosive stuff

Across the intervening seas of space

Bang into Luna's unoffending face.

Meanwhile our own alert star-gazing chief,