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According to Pliny, there is a stone in Arabia called Selenites, "wherein is a white, which increases and decreases with the moon." My journal for the last year or two, has been selenitic in this sense. Is not the midnight like Central Africa to most of us?
And one speculator of the time took a step even more daring, urging that the aerolites were neither of telluric nor selenitic origin, nor yet children of the sun, as the old Greeks had, many of them, contended, but that they are visitants from the depths of cosmic space. This bold speculator was the distinguished German physicist Ernst F. F. Chladni, a man of no small repute in his day.
It is claimed that a larger proportion of sand can be used with selenitic lime than with ordinary, thus counterbalancing the extra expense occasioned by royalty under the patent and special care in mixing. When a limestone contains 20 to 40 per cent, of clay, it becomes what is called a cement, and its behavior is different from that of limestones with less clay.
A sort of mortar called selenitic mortar, the invention of the late General Scott, has been made use of in many of the buildings of the School Board for London, and was first employed on a large scale in the erection of the Albert Hall. The result is that the mortar so made sets rapidly, and is very hard.
Moreover, there was a growing conviction that there are no active volcanoes on the moon, and other considerations of the same tenor led to the complete abandonment of the selenitic theory. But the theory of telluric origin of aerolites was by no means so easily disposed of.
This observation tended to discredit the selenitic theory, since an object, in order to acquire such speed in falling merely from the moon, must have been projected with an initial velocity not conceivably to be given by any lunar volcanic impulse.
Come out, my lady, and let me think o'er the countless multiplication of thy species, so that, while sailing through the interplanetary spaces, we may indulge in endless flights of fancy on the number and variety of thy descendants who will ere long render the Selenitic atmosphere vocal with canine ululation!"
I ought to add that the advocates of Scott's selenitic mortar claim that it not only sets quickly and hard, but that it is extremely tenacious, and consequently makes a much more robust wall than ordinary mortar. I dare say this is true; but I have not happened to see such a wall cut into, and this is the best test of solidity.
You must be models of canine deportment. The eyes of the whole Selenitic world will be upon you. You are the standard bearers of your race. From you they will receive their first impression regarding its merits. Let it be a favorable one.
They also undertook to examine the true nature of that system of parallel ramparts discovered on the moon's surface by Gruithuysen, a learned professor of Munich, who considered them to be "a system of fortifications thrown up by the Selenitic engineers." These two points, yet obscure, as well as others, no doubt, could not be definitely settled except by direct communication with the moon.
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