Selenites

“ I explained to him how our science was growing by the united labours of innumerable little men, and on that he made no comment save that it was evident we had mastered much in spite of our social savagery, or we could not have come to the moon. Yet the contrast was very marked. With knowledge the Selenites grew and changed; mankind stored their knowledge about them and remained brutes—equipped. ”

“ It would seem the exterior Selenites I saw were, indeed, mostly engaged in kindred occupations—mooncalf herds, butchers, fleshers, and the like. But within the moon, practically unsuspected by me, there are, it seems, a number of other sorts of Selenite, differing in size, differing in the relative size of part to part, differing in power and appearance, and yet not different [292] species of creatures, but only different forms of one species, and retaining through all their variations a certain common likeness that marks their specific unity. ”

“ The Greeks called the stone Selenitis Lithos, because they said it waxed and waned with the moon, a belief quaintly expressed by Trevisa in 1398 as follows: “Selenites is a stone of Perse, grene as grasse. It shineth with a white specke and foloweth the moon and waxyth and waneth as the moon doeth.” Some old stories tell of a belief that little Moon men which Howell, a 17th century writer, calls “Selenites or Lunary Men,” flung these stones deep in the earth. The Selenite was regarded as a love attractor and a stone to restore harmony between quarrelsome lovers. ”

“ They are just the very Selenites who'll never have heard of our existence. Suppose a Selenite had dropped on the earth when you were at Lympne, you'd have been the last man in the world to hear he had come. You never read a newspaper! You see the chances against you. Well, it's for these chances we're sitting here doing nothing while precious time is flying. I tell you we've got into a fix. We've come unarmed, we've lost our sphere, we've got no food, we've shown ourselves to the Selenites, and made them think we're strange, strong, dangerous animals ”

“ It is only when the water is in motion that it gives out light; in its rare seasons of calm it is black. Commonly, when one sees it, its waters rise and fall in an oily swell, and flakes and big rafts of shining, bubbly foam drift with the sluggish, faintly glowing current. The Selenites navigate its cavernous straits and lagoons in little shallow boats of a canoe-like shape; and even before my journey to the galleries about the Grand Lunar, who is Master of the Moon, I was permitted to make a brief excursion on its waters.
"The caverns and passages are naturally very tortuous. ”

“ A mooring-rope was flung and grasped, and I found myself pulled down to a level with a great crowd of Selenites, who jostled to see me.
“It was an incredible crowd. Suddenly and violently there was forced upon my attention the vast amount of difference there is amongst these beings of the moon.
“Indeed, there seemed not two alike in all that jostling multitude. They differed in shape, they differed in size, they rang all the horrible changes on the theme of Selenite form! Some bulged and overhung, some ran about among the feet of their fellows. ”

“ Their projectile, saturated with luminous gleams in the double irradiation of sun and moon, must have appeared like an incandescent globe. They had passed suddenly from excessive cold to intense heat. Nature was thus preparing them to become Selenites. Become Selenites! That idea brought up once more the question of the habitability of the moon. After what they had seen, could the travellers solve it? Would they decide for or against it? Michel Ardan persuaded his two friends to form an opinion, and asked them directly if they thought that men and animals were represented in the lunar world. ”

“ Selēnol′ogy, selenography.—adj. Selēnōtrop′ic, turning to the moon.—ns. Selēnot′ropism, Selēnot′ropy. [Gr. selēnē.]
Selenite, sel′en-īt, n. a transparent and beautiful variety of gypsum: a salt of selenium: a supposed inhabitant of the moon.—adjs. Selenit′ic; Selenitif′erous. [Gr. selēnitēs (lithos, stone) , moon-like—selēnē, the moon.]
Selenites, sel-ē-nī′tez, n.pl. a genus of coleopterous insects.
Selenium, sē-lē′ni-um, n. an element discovered by Berzelius in the refuse of a sulphuric-acid factory in 1817.—n. Sel′ēnate, a compound of selenic acid with a base.—adjs. ”

“ We saw that four of the Selenites standing in the doorway were much taller than the others, and clothed in the same manner as those we had seen in the crater, namely, with spiked round helmets and cylindrical body-cases, and that each of the four carried a goad with spike and guard made of that same dull-looking metal as the bowls. These four closed about us, one on either side of each of us, as we emerged from our chamber into the cavern from which the light had come. ”

“ Of course, they are not only colossally greater in size than ants, but also, in Cavor’s opinion at least, in intelligence, morality, and social wisdom are they colossally greater than men. And instead of the four or five different forms of ant that are found, there are almost innumerably different forms of Selenite. I had endeavoured to indicate the very considerable difference observable in such Selenites of the outer crust as I happened to encounter; the differences in size and proportions were certainly as wide as the differences between the most widely separated races of men. ”

“ We inhabit a new world peopled by ourselves alone, the Projectile! Ardan is Barbican's fellow being, and Barbican M'Nicholl's. Beyond us, outside us, humanity ends, and we are now the only inhabitants of this microcosm, and so we shall continue till the moment when we become Selenites pure and simple. ”

“ The watchman's spirit understood the language of the inhabitants of the moon pretty well. The Selenites* disputed variously about our earth, and expressed their doubts if it could be inhabited: the air, they said, must certainly be too dense to allow any rational dweller in the moon the necessary free respiration. They considered the moon alone to be inhabited: they imagined it was the real heart of the universe or planetary system, on which the genuine Cosmopolites, or citizens of the world, dwelt. What strange things men—no, what strange things Selenites sometimes take into their heads! ”

“ For were we to meet with the purest Veins of that Metal, by removing only one Turf, not a Selenite would think it worth his while.
"This is a Place of Peace and Tranquillity, and this World is exactly adapted to the Temper of its Inhabitants: Nature here is in an Eternal Calm; we enjoy an everlasting Spring; the Soil yields nothing noxious, and we can never want the Necessaries of Life, since every Herb affords a salubrious Repast to the Selenites. ”

“ The Heliots {92} and their allies on one part, make the following agreement with the Selenites and their allies on the other:—“That the Heliots shall demolish the wall now erected between them, that they shall make no irruptions into the territories of the Moon; and restore the prisoners according to certain articles of ransom to be stipulated concerning them; that the Selenites shall permit all the other stars to enjoy their rights and privileges; that they shall never wage war with the Heliots, but assist them whenever they shall be invaded ”

“ The absence of air entails the absence of water. It became, therefore, manifest that the Selenites, to support life under such conditions, must possess a special organization of their own, must differ remarkably from the inhabitants of the earth. ”

“ It acts upon the metals in the same manner, and even dissolves gold. The seleniates are also very similar in properties to the sulphates, and both classes of salts are isomorphous. The seleniates give the same characteristic odour before the blowpipe as the selenites. Their solutions give white precipitates with the salts of barium, strontian and lead, insoluble in nitric acid. If a soluble seleniate is boiled with hydrochloric acid, selenic acid is set free, and is reduced to selenious acid, sulphurous acid will then precipitate reduced selenium from the solution. ”

“ The making of these various sorts of operative must be a very curious and interesting process. I am very much in the dark about it, but quite recently I came upon a number of young Selenites confined in jars from which only the fore-limbs protruded, who were being compressed to become machine-minders of a special sort. The extended ‘hand’ in this highly developed system of technical education is stimulated by irritants and nourished by injection, while the rest of the body is starved. ”

“ The moon is, indeed, a sort of vast ant-hill, only, instead of there being only four or five sorts of ant, there are many hundred different sorts of Selenite, and almost every gradation between one sort and another.
It would seem the discovery came upon Cavor very speedily. I infer rather than learn from his narrative that he was captured by the mooncalf herds under the direction of those other Selenites who "have larger brain cases (heads?) and very much shorter legs." ”

“ It was down this shaft they took him, in this “sort of balloon” he speaks of, at first into an inky blackness and then into a region of continually increasing phosphorescence. [282] Cavor’s despatches show him to be curiously regardless of detail for a scientific man, but we gather that this light was due to the streams and cascades of water—“no doubt containing some phosphorescent organism”—that flowed ever more abundantly downward towards the Central Sea. And as he descended, he says, “The Selenites also became luminous.” ”

“ We must stick up a handkerchief on these tall spikes here and fasten it firmly, and from this as a centre we must work over the crater. You must go westward, moving out in semicircles to and fro towards the setting sun. You must move first with your shadow on your right until it is at right angles with the direction of your handkerchief, and then with your shadow on your left. And I will do the same to the east. We will look into every gully, examine every skerry of rocks; we will do all we can to find my sphere. If we see the Selenites we will hide from them as well as we can. ”

“ Many of the best localities for selenite are in the New Red Sandstone formation (Trias and Permian) , notably the salt-mines of Hall and Hallein, near Salzburg, and of Bex in Switzerland. Excellent crystals, usually of a brownish colour arranged in groups, are often found in the brine-chambers and the launders used in salt-works. Selenite also occurs in fine crystals in the sulphur-bearing marls of Girgenti and other Sicilian localities; whilst in Britain very bold crystals are yielded by the Kimeridge clay of Shotover Hill near Oxford. ”

“ We have observed that melted selenium behaves to the other substances as water to a greasy surface, and we are inclined to think that, when selenium is used in connection with metals not chemically acted upon by it, the points of contact between selenium and the metal offer a considerable amount of resistance to the passage of a galvanic current. By using brass we have been enabled to construct a large number of selenium-cells of different forms. The mode of applying the selenium is as follows: The cell is heated, and, when hot enough, a stick of selenium is rubbed over the surface. ”

“ Selenographers do not agree about their nature. They are quite distinct from each other. Julius Schmidt is of opinion that if the terrestrial oceans were dried up, a Selenite observer could only tell the difference between the terrestrial oceans and continental plains by patches of colour as distinctly varied as those which a terrestrial observer sees upon the moon. According to him, the colour common to the vast plains, known under the name of "seas," is dark grey, intermingled with green and brown. Some of the large craters are coloured in the same way. ”

“ And after dissolving calcareous Earth, forms with it a Selenite. In its concentrated State it dissolves Silver, Tin, &c. when diluted, Copper, and Iron.
Distilled from Salt, it is not unctuous; is little heavier than common Water; less corrosive than from Vitriol; and after dissolving calcareous Earth, forms with it, not Selenite, but a fixed Sal Armoniac. In its concentrated State it dissolves Lead, &c.
Distilled from the Swedish Stone, it is heavier than Acid of Salt, less heavy than the Vitriolic. It dissolves the Calxes of Metals more readily than Metals themselves. ”

“ From her immortal head a radiance is shown from heaven and embraces earth; and great is the beauty that ariseth from her shining light. The air, unlit before, glows with the light of her golden crown, and her rays beam clear, whensoever bright Selene having bathed her lovely body in the waters of Ocean, and donned her far-gleaming raiment, and yoked her strong-necked, shining team, drives on her long-maned horses at full speed, at eventime in the mid-month: then her great orbit is full and then her beams shine brightest as she increases. ”

“ But if the seleniate of soda be mixed with muriate of ammonia and heated, selenium, nitrogen and water come over, no trace of sulphur appearing. The selenium may, however, be dissolved in excess of nitric acid, and the selenious acid produced tested by [p472] muriate of baryta, which would then separate sulphuric acid if present; the clear solution is to be saturated with carbonate of soda, evaporated to dryness, and the mixture of selenite and nitrate of soda obtained, fuzed in a porcelain crucible over a spirit-lamp. ”

“ Moments were too precious to be sacrificed in idle discussion. The Selenite city, whether imaginary or not, had already disappeared afar off. The distance of the projectile from the lunar disc was on the increase, and the details of the soil were being lost in a confused jumble. The reliefs, the circles, the craters and plains alone remained, and still showed their boundary lines distinctly. At this moment, to the left, lay extended one of the finest circles of lunar orography, one of the curiosities of this continent. ”