However, we can judge for ourselves when we get
there.--But, apropos of nothing, tell me, Barbican, what do you think of
the Moon being an ancient comet, which had come so far within the sphere
of the Earth's attraction as to be kept there and turned into a
satellite?"
"Well, that _is_ an original idea!" said Barbican with a smile.
"My ideas generally are of that category," observed Ardan with an
affectation of dry pomposity.
"Not this time, however, friend Michael," observed M'Nicholl.
"Oh! I'm a plagiarist, am I?" asked the Frenchman, pretending to be
irritated.
"Well, something very like it," observed M'Nicholl quietly. "Apollonius
Rhodius, as I read one evening in the Philadelphia Library, speaks of
the Arcadians of Greece having a tradition that their ancestors were so
ancient that they inhabited the Earth long before the Moon had ever
become our satellite. They therefore called them [Greek: _Proselenoi_]
or _Ante-lunarians_. Now starting with some such wild notion as this,
certain scientists have looked on the Moon as an ancient comet brought
close enough to the Earth to be retained in its orbit by terrestrial
attraction."
"Why may not there be something plausible in such a hypothesis?" asked
Ardan with some curiosity.
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