NEWS FROM THE MOON. 235 



vaporous condition. Assuming that, as our poet laureate 

 has expressed the theory 



This world was once a fluid haze of light, 

 Till toward the centre set the starry tides 

 And eddied into suns, that wheeling cast 

 The planets 



we can form no other conception of our earth's primal 

 condition than as a vapour globe. Our moon likewise 

 affords abundant evidence of having once been in an 

 intensely heated state. And doubtless there was once 

 a time when the earth and moon were both (at the 

 same time) vaporous through intensity of heat. 



Now, I have not gone back to that far distant 

 epoch for the purpose of seeking there for the secret of 

 the moon's present figure. It appears to me reasonable 

 to trace back to such an epoch the singular law of the 

 moon's rotation, whereby she always keeps the same 

 face turned towards the earth ; for, far off though that 

 epoch may be, it is not separated from our time by so 

 enormous a lapse of ages as could be required to 'brake' 

 a rapidly rotating moon to the moon's present strangely 

 slow rotation-rate. In the distant era, then, when the 

 moon was a vapour-nucleus within the great vapour- 

 globe which was at some future period to form the 

 earth we live upon, the moon thus involved learned 

 to rotate synchronously with her revolution. But 

 gradually the earth's vapour-globe shrunk in its 

 dimensions until the moon was left outside or we 

 may say that the vaporous envelopes around the two 

 chief nuclei so far shrank as no longer to be any- 

 where intermixed. From this time forth the moon 



