r upon this experiment as giving
some light to the invention of the art of flying."

John Wilkins, one of the most influential early members of the Royal
Society, in his _Mathematicall Magick_,[6] in 1648, suggested "four
several ways whereby this flying in the air hath been or may be
attempted." He listed, as the second, "By the help of fowls." Ten years
earlier there appeared in England during the same year two works which
were to have great influence in popularizing the theme of light:
Wilkins's _Discovery of a World in the Moone_,[7] a serious
semiscientific work on the nature of the moon and the possibility of
man's flying thither, and a prose romance by Francis Godwin, _The Man in
the Moone: or, A Discourse of a Voyage thither by D. Gonsales._[8] These
two works were largely responsible for the emergence of the old theme of
flight to the moon in imaginative literature; the English translation of
Lucian at almost the same time perhaps aided in advancing the popularity
of the idea.

The similarities between Brunt's romance and Godwin's tale a century
earlier are too striking to be fortuitous, and, indeed, there is no
question that Brunt used Godwin as one of his chief sources. An earlier
_Robinson Crusoe_, an idyllic _Gulliver's Travels_, Godwin's _The Man in
the Moone_ helped to establish in English literature the vogue of the
traveler's tale to strange countries. Domingo, like Captain Samuel
Brunt, draws from the "exotic" tradition. Both travelers find themselves
in strange lands; both experience many other adventures before they make
their way to the moon, drawn by birds.

But the century which elapsed between Godwin's fanciful tale and Brunt's
fantastic romance felt the impact of the new science. No matter how
clearly both tales draw from old traditions of legend and literature,
no matter how many elements of fantasy remain, there is a profound and
fundamental difference between them. Godwin's hero made his way to the
moon by mere chance; it happened that he harnessed himself to his gansas
during their period of hibernation. Too late, he discovered that gansas
hibernate in the moon! The earlier voyage took only "Eleven or Twelve
daies"--and that by gansa power! The earlier author did not suggest that
his hero encountered any particular difficulties of respiration, nor did
he pause to consider in detail the problem of the nature of the
intervening air through which his hero passed.

But a hundred years of sci