y the visitors to Saturn when
actually within his system, were only such as might possibly or probably
be seen, but for which we have no real evidence. In consequence of this
omission, I received several inquiries about these matters. 'Is it
true,' some wrote, 'that the small satellite Hyperion' (scarce
discernible in powerful telescopes, while Titan and Japetus on either
side are large) 'is only one of a ring of small satellites travelling
between the orbits of the larger moons?'--as the same planets travel
between the paths of Mars and Jupiter. Others asked on what grounds it
was said that the voyagers found small moons circling about Titan, the
giant moon of the Saturnian system, as the moons of Jupiter and Saturn
circle around those giant members of the solar system. In each case, I
was reduced to the abject necessity of explaining that there was no
evidence for the alleged state of things, which, however, might
nevertheless exist. Scientific fiction which has to be interpreted in
that way is as bad as a joke that has to be explained. In my 'Journey to
the Sun' I was more successful (it was the earlier essay, however);
insomuch that Professor Young, of Dartmouth College (Hanover, N.H.), one
of the most skilful solar observers living, assured me that, with
scarcely a single exception, the various phenomena described
corresponded exactly with the ideas he had formed respecting the
probable condition of our luminary.[50]

But I must confess that my own experience has not been, on the whole,
favourable to that kind of popular science writing. It appears to me
that the more thoroughly the writer of such an essay has studied any
particular scientific subject, the less able must he be to write a
fictitious narrative respecting it. Just as those ignorant of any
subject are often the readiest to theorise about it, because least
hampered by exact knowledge, so I think that the careful avoidance of
any exact study of the details of a scientific subject must greatly
facilitate the writing of a fictitious narrative respecting it. But
unfortunately a narrative written under such conditions, however
interesting to the general reader, can scarcely forward the propagation
of scientific knowledge, one of the qualities claimed for fables of the
kind. As an instance in point, I may cite Jules Verne's 'Voyage to the
Moon,' where (apart, of course, from the inherent and intentional
absurdity of the scheme itself), the circumstances which