260 Kansas Academy of Science. 



will be the surface; and the converse, the smaller the mass 

 the smoother the surface. Thus the earth should be very- 

 rough, and the moon should present a surface as smooth as 

 a ball. 



The facts, however, are almost the reverse. 



That I may make no mistake in presenting the present 

 theory, I will quote Dr. Percival Lowell, of the Lowell Observ- 

 atory, Flagstaff, Ariz., from his article in the November 

 Centu7'y. 



"Turning now to the moon, the first thing that strikes us 

 on observation is the glaring exception to the order of smooth- 

 ness, earth, Mars, moon, seemingly made by the latter. The 

 lunar surface is conspicuously rough, pitted with what are 

 evidently volcanic cones of enormous girth and of great 

 height, and seamed by ridges more than the equal of the 

 earth's in elevation. Many lunar craters have ramparts 17,- 

 000 feet high, and some exceed in diameter 100 miles; while 

 the Leibnitz range of mountains, seen in profile on the lunar 

 limb, rise nearly 30,000 feet in the air, or rather into space, 

 as the moon has no atmosphere. 



"On the principle that the internal heat to cause contraction 

 was as the body's mass — and no physical deduction is sounder 

 — this state of things on the surface of our satellite is unac- 

 countable. The moon should have a surface like a frozen 

 sea, and it shows one that surpasses the earth's in shag- 

 giness." 



It is right here that my deductions conflict with all of the 

 present theories as to the cause of the roughness of the moon's 

 surface. 



I claim that the moon has no mountains or volcanoes such 

 as we know here on the earth — that is, produced by internal 

 force — but that its present roughened surface was produced 

 by external forces and by these alone. 



The law .of liquids obtains throughout the universe, so 

 what we may see and demonstrate in them here and now 

 must have occurred under like conditions when the moon was 

 formed. 



Whatever the origin of the moon may have been, it is evi- 

 dent that it was at one time a molten mass, else it could not 

 have assumed the globular form; and also it must have at- 

 tained this shape and started to cool before all the fragments 

 that made its present mass were finally attracted to it, just 



