Page:Life in a thousand worlds.djvu/36

 from my first point of observation everything looked as if life had never existed there and, consequently, I was about to conclude that no human beings inhabit the Moon. This theory soon vanished, for after I had traveled over a hundred miles I came to a thriving center of population, the largest city on the sphere, inhabited by more than sixty thousand rational beings.

These creatures resemble us most strongly in their mental capacities, though their bodies are out of harmony with ours, having three eyes and no nose. The third eye is situated in the center of the forehead, and the other two more toward the sides of the head.

Life is not sustained by breathing a gaseous air as we do, so that the sense of smell is performed by the protruded upper lip. At the voluntary effort to catch scent the upper lip noticeably rolls upward into a partial scroll.

I was anxious to learn how the life of these Moonites is sustained without breathing and, to my astonishment, I learned that they eat solid air at intervals of about six hours. This is not taken in connection with the