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 LECTURE III JOURNEYING BY TELESCOPE

may now consider that we have properly said good-bye to our old friend the Earth, who attracts us in more ways than one; we have also looked at the station or port, and it is really time to be starting. We must seriously choose our carriage and get into it. What kind of a carriage is it to be?

We saw last time that an airship or aeroplane can only take us a very little way—six or seven miles at the most—and we want to go much farther than that. Jules Verne chose to shoot a great projectile holding three people, which went as far as the Moon; but then he had to start it with great velocity, and it was only his enthusiastic imagination which enabled the travellers to survive the shock. Mr. H. G. Wells had the happy idea of screening out gravity by a newly discovered substance called Cavorite (in honour of its inventor). For that purpose blinds were fitted to the windows of the "sphere" that he mentions in his fascinating book; and so this "sphere" was enabled to float, or move in some indescribable way (because we are so accustomed to gravity we do not quite know what to call movement without it) as far as the Moon. It might have gone even much further, without difficulty or inconvenience, except 87