The Moon: A Popular Treatise

The reader familiar with astronomical literature will doubtless remark a certain resemblance between the plan on which this book is written and that of Fontenelle’s “Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds,” a French classic of the eighteenth century. The author freely acknowledges that it was the recollection of the pleasure which the reading of Fontenelle’s book gave him, years ago, that led to the adoption of a somewhat similar plan for this description of the moon. But, except that in both cases the conversational method is employed, no great likeness will be found between what is here presented and the work of the witty Frenchman.