88 SCENERY OF THE HEAVENS. 



the appointed weeks of harvest, and affording useful aid in gathering in the fruits of the 

 earth. The comparative proportion which the light of the moon bears to that of the sun 

 is a problem to the solution of which the attention of several philosophers has been 

 directed. The whole heavens covered with full moons would scarcely make daylight. 

 From various experiments that have been made, it is supposed that the lunar light is only 

 equal to the 800,000th part that of the sun ; and, until very recently, its rays were 

 believed to be without heat, as when collected by the aid of the most powerful glasses, no 

 appreciable effect was produced upon the thermometer. But by concentrating them in a 

 lens of three feet diameter, Melloni, the Italian philosopher, is said to have obtained a 

 sensible elevation of temperature ; and the same result has been gained by experimenting 

 at a high altitude. In 1856, under the auspices of the British Association, Professor 

 Smyth conveyed a large collection of instruments for scientific purposes to the Peak of 

 Teneriffe, and made observations at two stations, respectively 8840 and 10,700 feet above the 

 sea. At both stations, the heat radiated from the moon, so often sought for in vain in a 

 lower region, was distinctly perceptible. But, vastly inferior as is the lunar to the solar light, 

 its utility has been appreciated in all ages and countries by both rude and cultivated nations. 

 To those, indeed, who are the least advanced in civilisation, or who are locally situated apart 

 from its aids, its value is the greatest. Owing to the rapid progress of the useful arts among 

 the cultivated races, they have been abundantly supplied with the means of artificial 

 light ; superseding to some extent their dependence upon the arrangements of Nature, and 

 lowering their estimate of the advantage of her provisions. To the inhabitants of London 

 or Paris, whose streets are splendidly illuminated at night, the presence of the moon is 

 more a matter of ornament than of use. But it is otherwise when the day has closed 

 with the mariner at sea ; the peasant homeward tracking his way through the drifted 

 snow ; the traveller in a strange country ; and the barbarous migratory hordes of men. 

 To such, when the day has departed, the moon pursues her nightly circuit through the 

 heavens in beauty and brightness, as a friend in need, chasing away the gloom, revealing 

 the features of the scenery, and disclosing the right path. To the Lunarians, if such 

 there be, a similar service will be rendered by the earth, which, to those who occupy the 

 presented hemisphere of the moon, Avill relieve with reflected light their fifteen days of 

 darkness. The terrestrial world will exhibit to the lunar inhabitants all the phases which 

 their dwelling presents to us, but upon a far grander scale, the earth appearing upwards of 

 three times the size of the sun, and thirteen times greater than does the satellite, to our 

 selves. Its aspect will be perpetually changing by the rapid rotation upon its axis its 

 tracts of sea and continent being alternately presented ; and provided with instrumental 

 aid as powerful as that which we possess, a lunar dweller may discern various terrestrial 

 phenomena the mighty masses of cloud that are pendent in our atmosphere, the flashing 

 lightning, the fields of ice at the poles, and the occasional outburst of volcanic fires. 



