Lunarian

A very few months, with attention and practice, will enable any one with a good eye and steady hand to take correct lunar distances. The officers in the East India Company’s Service have deservedly had the reputation of being very expert lunarians and excellent navigators.

Had a fine view of the five Nepturian asteroids, and watched with much interest the putting up of a huge impost on a couple of lintels in the new temple at Daphnis in the moon. It was amusing to think that creatures so diminutive as the lunarians and bearing so little resemblance to humanity, yet evinced a mechanical ingenuity so much superior to our own.

It is not shown in the maps made by [Wilhelm Gotthelf] Lohrmann and by [Wilhelm] Beer and [Johann Heinrich von] Mädler, nor does [Johann Hieronymus] Schröter, or any of the older lunarians, indicate a crater at this part of the moon’s surface.

All navigators will tell you that from one day to another ship may lose or gain more than five miles in her sailing-account, and again, in the matter of lunars, even expert lunarians are considered as doing clever work when they average within eight miles of the truth. […] The work of the lunarian, though seldom practised in these days of chronometers, is beautifully edifying, and there is nothing in the realm of navigation that lifts one’s heart up more in adoration.