Note 1 — Chapter XV

Cyrano's own work. It is full of interesting matters, including a trip through the country of the Birds, which offers many points of comparison with Gulliver's Voyage to the country of the Houyhnhms. Cyrano finally, under the guidance of Campanella, arrives at the land of the Philosophers of the Sun (compare Swift's Laputa), where he meets Descartes and Gassendi, as Gulliver does in the Laputan province of Glubbdubdrib (Voyage to Laputa, chap. viii.).

Cyrano's machine for reaching the sun, depicted in the illustration opposite, is best described in the words of M. Rostand's play, and completes our parallels with all the six means of scaling the sky which Cyrano there enumerates: "Or else, I could have let the wind into a cedar coffer, then ratified the imprisoned element by means of cunningly adjusted burning glasses, and soared up with it."