Page:Works of Jules Verne - Parke - Vol 3.djvu/18

2 name; and then to reissue the two, or maybe three, combined under a new and entirely different title.

''"A Trip from the Earth to the Moon in 97 hours, 13 minutes and 20 seconds," to give the first book of the story its full length original name, plays even more boldly with science than did the "Journey to the Center of the Earth." Yet the theories back of the great gun which shoots the adventurers into space, are sound. And what a vivid realisation is given of the meaning of these vast astronomical distances and forces. Says one of our leading scientific periodicals, speaking of this book, "The time at which the projectile was to be shot out of the cannon is correctly fixed on true astronomical grounds, and the reader who follows its flight will have a more concrete idea of and interest in what gravitation is and does than from half a dozen text-books."''

''As to the discoveries made by the explorers in the second book of the tale, it is noteworthy that here Verne has again restrained himself, instead of plunging blindly into inventions as a less conscientious romancer might easily have done. His picture of the moon is hard and cold, confined to just what astronomers actually know or closely surmise. He brings the views and visions of the scientist into a field usually abandoned to the fooleries of extravaganza.''