THE QUARTERLY 
JOURNAL OF SCIENCE. 
JULY, 1864. 
ORIGINAL ARTICLES. 
ON THE PHYSICAL ASPECTS OF THE MOON’S SURFACE. 
By James Nasmyru. 
Tue desire to know something of other worlds besides our own has 
ever been a prominent one with intelligent minds, and as the telescope 
has enabled us virtually to reduce the distance between ourselves 
and those remote orbs that revolve around the sun, many facts have 
thus been elicited concerning their physical constitution. 
Interesting as such facts may be, they are vague and insufficient 
as compared with those which the telescope has revealed to us, in 
regard to our nearest celestial neighbour, the Moon, whose com- 
parative proximity enables us, even by the aid of a moderate magnify- 
ing power, to gain a very exact knowledge of the physical structure 
of her surface. 
As the Moon’s hemisphere, which is ever turned towards us, has 
its features illuminated in opposite directions during her monthly 
passage in her orbit around the earth, every part of it is exposed in 
turn to the rays of the sun, which fall on the details of its features in 
constantly varying inclinations; and it is from this circumstance that 
we have such favourable opportunities afforded to us of obtaining a 
very correct knowledge of the configuration of the details in question, 
as well as of their height or depression above or below the mean 
level of the Moon’s general surface. Thus it is that we are enabled 
most carefully to scrutinize her remarkable surface ; and should we 
have drawn any hasty inferences from one set of observations, the 
opportunity is usually presented to us in the course of a fortnight, or 
at farthest a month, to correct them if erroneous, or to verify them if 
accurate, and to pursue further investigations that may be suggested 
by reflection on what we had last observed. 
In these respects telescopic visits to the surface of the moon 
yield more correct and reliable results than would many a visit to 
portions of our world where the scenery to be surveyed is not, 
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