Chapter 24

The Natural History of the Selenites

The messages of Cavor from the sixth up to the sixteenth are for the most part so much broken, and they abound so in repetitions, that they scarcely form a consecutive narrative.  They will be given in full, of course, in the scientific report, but here it will be far more convenient to continue simply to abstract and quote as in the former chapter.  We have subjected every word to a keen critical scrutiny, and my own brief memories and impressions of lunar things have been of inestimable help in interpreting what would otherwise have been impenetrably dark.  And, naturally, as living beings, our interest centres far more upon the strange community of lunar insects in which he was living, it would seem, as an honoured guest than upon the mere physical condition of their world.

I have already made it clear, I think, that the Selenites I saw resembled man in maintaining the erect attitude, and in having four limbs, and I have compared the general appearance of their heads and the jointing of their limbs to that of insects.  I have mentioned, too, the peculiar consequence of the smaller gravitation of the moon on their fragile slightness.  Cavor confirms me upon all these points.  He calls them “animals,” though of course they fall under no division of the classification of earthly creatures, and he points out “the insect type of anatomy had, fortunately for men, never exceeded a relatively very small size on earth.”  The largest terrestrial insects, living or extinct, do not, as a matter of fact, measure six inches in length; “but here, against the lesser gravitation of the moon, a creature certainly as much an insect as vertebrate seems to have been able to attain to human and ultra-human dimensions.”

He does not mention the ant, but throughout his allusions the ant is continually being brought before my mind, in its sleepless activity, in its intelligence and social organisation, in its structure, and more particularly in the fact that it displays, in addition to the two forms, the male and the female form, that almost all other animals possess, a number of other sexless creatures, workers, soldiers, and the like, differing from one another in structure, character, power, and use, and yet all members of the same species.  For these Selenites, also, have a great variety of forms.  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