peaceable, friendly race. Thus the moon directly influenced and governed
affairs on the earth. Looked at from that distance it seems to have been
the most remarkable case of the tail wagging the dog that the earth had
ever seen.

"But we may as well relate the sequel. The effect of the treatment lasted
only a few hundred years, and as it was the moon's policy never to repeat
a cure, men in time became as bad as ever again, and so at last the flood
had to come and wipe them off the face of the earth."




CHAPTER XVII

THE DOCTOR IS CONVINCED


As I finished the doctor looked somewhat bored, but Thorwald was kind
enough to thank me, and then, at our earnest solicitation, he resumed his
argument.

"You have told me," he said, "of some of your earlier beliefs about the
origin of meteorites. Have you any more modern views?"

To this the doctor replied: "If my friend here has really finished talking
for a while I will say, Thorwald, that the theories already spoken of seem
to be disproved by the discovery that these stones enter the earth's
atmosphere with a planetary velocity. A body falling from an infinite
distance--that is, impelled only by the attraction of gravitation--would