NEWS FROM THE MOON. 231 



regarded as an enormous elevation, rising in the middle 

 fully seventy miles above the mean level. In fact, the 

 moon, according to these measurements, would come to 

 be regarded as egg-shaped, the smaller end of the egg 

 being turned earthwards, only it will of course be 

 understood that, regarded as a whole, the moon's body 

 would not differ very markedly from the globular form. 

 It would be shaped, to speak plainly, like a nearly 

 round egg. 



Of course, this way of throwing the centre of gravity 

 farther away than the middle of the lunar diameter 

 directed towards the earth, leads to results quite dif- 

 ferent from those which would follow if the moon were 

 a globe in shape but loaded like a die internally. That 

 great hill of matter on the earthward side of the moon 

 would draw the oceans and air away from the farther 

 side not, indeed, to its own summit, that is, not to 

 the middle of the disc we see, but to its base. In fact, 

 there would be a gathering of the waters in a zone all 

 round the edge of the moon's visible disc, and over this 

 zone the atmospheric pressure would also be greatest. 

 Since, as a matter of fact, there is no sign either of 

 water or air on this zone of the moon's surface, we 

 must perforce abandon the theory that lunar oceans 

 and air still lie anywhere on the surface of the moon. 



The reader will probably conclude, as the evidence 

 seems to require, that all ideas to the contrary not- 

 withstanding, the moon has never had either a watery 

 envelope or an aerial one in the slightest degree com- 

 parable in relative extent with those on our earth. 



