288 LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE. 



form of our globe. The faint uncertain light, which at the 

 time of the first quarter fills up the rest of the round orb, 

 serves them to measure the intensity of the light which the 

 earth diffuses. The perturbations in her motions teach them 

 the respective powers of attraction of sun and earth, make 

 known their form and reveal even the internal structure 

 of the latter. Eclipses must serve as means to measure 

 the height of lunar mountains, and to investigate more 

 closely the secrets of the sun itself, and when the moon 

 covers fixed stars, they learn by this the velocity of light, 

 the distance of those stars and the density of our own 

 atmosphere. 



From a consideration of such signal services rendered 

 to grateful mankind, we might well grant the moon a 

 word now and then to the clerk of the weather. But 

 the faith of our forefathers in this respect has been al- 

 most entirely destroyed. Neither the barometer itself, nor 

 tHe most careful observations made during the space of 

 twenty-eight years in the north, during fifty years in the 

 tropics, show any reliable influence of the moon on our 

 weather. Still the world adheres with a constancy, worthy 

 of a better cause, to the ancient belief. The faithful prefer 

 their own observations to those of abstract science, as 

 they call it, and insist upon it that a change in the moon 

 produces a change in the weather ; what their grand- 

 parents taught them, they faithfully hand down to grand- 

 children. We all have a tendency to explain mysteries 

 by new mysteries, and as no science has yet been able 

 to enter into the great laboratory where rain and sun- 

 shine are manufactured, the world finds it easy and con- 



