The works of Edgar Allan Poe; newly collected and edited, with a memoir, critical introductions, and notes, by Edmund Clarence Stedman and George Edward Woodberry; the illustrations by Albert Edward Sterner.

ADVENTURE OF ONE HANS PFAALL

the solar ray to be 5,376 feet. My ideas upon this
topic had also received confirmation by a passage in
the eighty-second volume of the Philosophical Transactions, in-which it is stated that, at an' occultation of
Jupiter's satellites, the third disappeared after having
been about I" or 2" of time indistinct, and the fourth
became indiscernible near the limb.1
Upon the resistance, or more properly, upon the
support of an atmosphere, existing in the state of
density imagined, I had, of course, entirely depended
for the safety of my ultimate descent. Should I then,
after all, prove to have been mistaken, I had in consequence nothing better to expect, as a finale to my
adventure, than being dashed into atoms against the
rugged surface of the satellite. And, indeed, I had
now every reason to be terrified. My distance from
the moon was comparatively trifling, while the labor
required by the condenser was diminished not at all,
and I could discover no indication whatever of a
decreasing rarity in the air.
1 Hevelius writes that he has several times found, in skies perfectly clear, when even stars of the sixth and seventh magnitude
were conspicuous, that, at the same altitude of the moon, at the
same elongation from the earth, and with one and the same excellent telescope, the moon and its maculae did not appear equally
lucid at all times. From the circumstances of the observation, it
is evident that the cause of this phenomenon is not either in our
air, in the tube, in the moon, or in the eye of the spectator, but
must be looked for in something (an atmosphere?) existing about
the moon.
Cassini frequently observed Saturn, Jupiter, and the fixed stars,
when approaching the moon to occultation, to have their circular
figure changed into an oval one; and, in other occultations, he
found no alteration of figure at all. Hence it might be supposed,
that at some times, and not at others, there is a dense matter en.
compassing the moon wherein the rays of the stars are refracted
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