Filippo Morghen's illustrations for the 1769 edition of John Wilkins' The Discovery of a World in the Moone are fantastical etchings depicting whimsical and exotic life on the Moon

 Introduction: The Lunar Travelogue that Never Was

Welcome, fellow travelers of the imagination, to the utterly sensible, entirely factual account of Bishop John Wilkins' seminal trip to the Moon. Or, rather, Filippo Morghen's wildly inaccurate, yet delightfully etched, Raccolta delle cose più notabili vedute da Giovanni Wilkins (Collection of the most notable things seen by John Wilkins). Forget sober scientific inquiry; this is science fiction filtered through a rococo espresso machine. The year is the mid-18th century, a time when the very idea of lunar travel was a hot topic, thanks to scientific pioneers like the real John Wilkins, who wrote a serious treatise on the possibility of a "habitable world in the moone" back in 1638. Morghen, a Florentine engraver with a mischievous streak, decided to illustrate this theoretical world, but clearly, he'd had a bit too much limoncello before picking up his etching needle. The result is a series of nine plates that serve as a visual "capriccio," a whimsical fantasy that treats the Moon not as a barren rock, but as a place where the logic of Earth has been gently, but firmly, placed in a blender. The explorer, the respectable Bishop Wilkins himself, finds his earnest ponderings translated into a visual feast of the absurd, a place where everything is slightly off-kilter, a true "new world" that owes more to the imagination of an 18th-century artist than any celestial reality. Prepare to have your grip on reality loosened, one preposterous plate at a time.

Chapter 1: The Glorious Inefficiency of Lunar Transport

The first plate plunges us directly into the heart of lunarian innovation, which mostly involves making things harder than they need to be. Our introduction to local transport methods immediately highlights a profound engineering philosophy: if it works, make it complicated and slightly ridiculous. We are presented with what appears to be a stagecoach, a perfectly Earth-bound invention, but in the Moon, wheels are for decoration only. Instead, this magnificent contraption is fitted with full-sized sails. The logic seems to be that the Moon has wind, and by Jove, they will harness it, even if they can't steer or go upwind effectively. It's a land-yacht with all the navigational precision of a drunken butterfly. One can imagine the lunarian traffic jams, dependent entirely on a celestial breeze. The sight of the elegantly dressed passengers, likely tobacco-smoking residents with a touch of European chinoiserie flair, patiently waiting for the wind to change direction is a masterpiece of patient absurdity. It sets the tone perfectly for a world that prioritizes style and whimsical engineering over mere functionality.

Chapter 2: The Aquatic Bellows-Barge, or the Power of Hot Air

If land travel is a gamble with the elements, water travel is an exercise in pure, unadulterated manual labor. Morghen presents us with "The Manner of sailing by the power of Bellows practiced on that Planet". Instead of oars, poles, or even a sensible sail, these watercraft are propelled by enormous bellows, operated vigorously by a team of enthusiastic, muscular lunarians. The logic is baffling: they've mastered sails on land where wind is tricky, but on the water, where a sail might actually be useful, they resort to human-powered wind machines. It's the ultimate example of over-engineering the simple. The etching captures the sheer exertion of the task, the operators huffing and puffing to generate a modest puff of air to move their barge. It's a brilliant, visual pun on the very nature of "hot air" and human effort, suggesting that perhaps all our technological striving on Earth is just as pointlessly laborious. One can only assume the lunarian phrase for a slow journey is "waiting for the bellows-blower to finish his lunch break."

Chapter 3: Avian Propulsion and the Snail Problem

As if to one-up the bellows-barge, the next plate reveals an even more bizarre form of aquatic locomotion: a boat powered by a giant bird. A massive avian creature, looking slightly disgruntled, is chained to the front of a boat, its enormous wings serving as the primary engine. The lunarian fishermen in the boat reward the bird with a share of the catch, which consists of monstrously oversized snails, each one the size of a small dog. The scale is, as always in Morghen's moon, all over the place. Normal sized humans interact with dog-sized snails and building-sized birds. The entire scene is a perfect snapshot of a food chain gone mad. It's a world where basic biology is a mere suggestion. The image of the giant bird flapping furiously, hopefully not flapping the boat to pieces, while being placated with a slimy, gargantuan snail, highlights a deeply unstable, yet apparently functional, ecosystem. It makes you wonder what the bird eats for breakfast and if they have giant salt shakers

Chapter 4: The Great Rodent-Mousetrap Fiasco

Hunting on the Moon requires not skill, stealth, or even a basic understanding of animal behavior, but an industrial-sized appetite for mechanical over-complication. Plate 4 depicts a lunarian hunting "a wild beast resembling a porcupine" with a "large bladed mechanism" that looks suspiciously like a massive pair of scissors or a giant, lethal mousetrap. The creature in question, a spiky, rodent-like beast the size of a cow, is enticed by bait. The mechanism is designed to split the beast "from head to tail," which seems an excessively violent and impractical way to procure dinner. The hunter is nonchalantly manipulating this death-machine, perhaps smoking a pipe, awaiting the inevitable, messy outcome. The sheer disproportion of the weapon to the task, and the bizarre nature of the "prey," turns the serious act of hunting into a slapstick comedy of errors. It's less a depiction of survival and more a testament to an alien society's obsession with Rube Goldberg-esque solutions to simple problems.

Chapter 5: The Perils of the Winged Serpent

The hunt continues with a more traditional, albeit still bizarre, method: a "Savage mounted on a winged Serpent battling with a wild beast resembling a Porcupine". Here we see a return to organic transportation, but with a serious upgrade in danger quotient. A brave, or perhaps foolish, lunarian rides atop a bridled, butterfly-winged serpent. This is not a majestic steed; it is a creature that seems equal parts reptile, insect, and existential dread. The beast it battles is the same spiky, rodent-like cow from the previous plate. The image is a fever dream of biology, mixing recognizable elements of Earth fauna into monstrous new forms. It’s a wonderfully chaotic scene that taps into the European fascination with "exotic" and "savage" New World imagery, filtering it through a lens of pure, unadulterated fantasy. The "savage" nature of the moon dwellers is portrayed not with fear, but with a kind of whimsical awe at their sheer audacity in riding a giant, flying snake to fight a porcupine on steroids.

Chapter 6: The Ubiquitous, Multi-Purpose Pumpkin

If there is one constant in Morghen's Moon, it is the pumpkin. Not just any pumpkin, but oversized, house-sized pumpkins that grow on trees or on the ground or even on the water. The lunarians have wisely realized that these massive gourds are a superior building material and have hollowed them out to use as cottages and fishing boats. Plate 6 showcases this sustainable, if slightly damp, lifestyle. It's a marvel of eco-friendly engineering, assuming the pumpkins don't rot or attract an army of supersized squirrels. The image is charmingly domestic, with a figure tending to a pumpkin on the ground and others floating serenely as boats. The surrealism comes from the casual acceptance of this absurdity. A house-sized vegetable as a home is presented as perfectly normal. It suggests a world where agriculture and architecture have merged in the most literal, and most edible, way possible.

Chapter 7: Pumpkin Dwellings and Feline Foes

The utility of the giant pumpkin continues to be a major architectural theme. This plate specifically focuses on "Pumpkins used as dwellings to be secure against wild beasts". This implies that the threat level on the Moon is surprisingly high and that hardened gourd-shells are the preferred defense mechanism. It makes one wonder about the nature of these "wild beasts." Are they the giant porcupine-cows? Or something even more sinister, something that finds pumpkin dwellings particularly appealing? The image evokes a sense of cozy, if slightly precarious, safety. The choice of the pumpkin as a fortified home adds a layer of domestic satire to the proceedings. It's a whimsical, yet practical, solution to an unspoken threat, highlighting the moon dwellers' ingenuity in the face of a genuinely strange environment.

Chapter 8: The Snail Farm and Feathered Friends

We return to the charming industry of giant snail farming. In this plate, we see more of these magnificent mollusks being cultivated or, more likely, prepared for consumption by the massive, bellows-boat-pulling bird from Chapter 3. The scene shows the scale distortion at its finest: a human figure interacting with snails the size of large basset hounds. The image is a great example of Morghen's blend of the familiar and the fantastic. A farm scene is a mundane subject, but replace the chickens with giant, slimy gastropods, and you have instant surrealism. It raises logistical questions: how do they milk them? What do the shells feel like? Is snail-farming the primary industry? The casual nature with which the lunarian handles the enormous snail is a testament to how quickly the bizarre becomes normal in this "new world."

Chapter 9: The Curious Case of the Drumming Geese

The final chapter brings us to the delightful image of "A House on Water, and a New Way to Summon Geese by the Beat of a Drum". The image displays more of the riverine life of the lunarians, with houses floating peacefully. The truly inexplicable part is the "new way to summon geese." A person is enthusiastically beating a large drum, presumably to call a flock of geese for some unstated purpose. These geese appear to be of normal Earth size, adding to the delightful confusion of scale on the Moon. Why a drum? Why not breadcrumbs, or a specific call? The answer, of course, is that a drum is funnier and more surreal. It's a perfect capstone to the entire series, a final image of a world that operates on its own peculiar, whimsical, and utterly charming logic, where a drum solo is an effective method of animal husbandry and pumpkins are homes.

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