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NATURE-STUDY REVIEW 



[17:1— Jan., 1921 



Lunar Mountains 

 Ideal lunar landscape from Nasmyth and Carpenter 



we stand, extensive mountain chains run to north and to south, 

 casting long shadows toward us; and away to southward run 

 several great chasms a mile wide and of appalling blackness and 

 depth. Nearer still, almost beneath us, crag rises on crag and 

 precipice upon precipice, mingled with craters and yawning pits, 

 towering pinnacles of rock and piles of scoriae and volcanic debris. 

 But we behold no sign of existing or vestige of past organic life. 

 No heaths or mosses soften the sharp edges and hard surfaces: 

 no tints of cryptogamous or lichenous vegetation give a complex- 

 ion of life to the hard fire-worn countenance of the scene. The 

 whole landscape, as far as the eye can reach, is a realization ol a 

 fearful dream of desolation and lifelessness — not a dream of death, 

 for that implies evidence of pre-existing life, but a vision of a world 

 upon which the light of life has never dawned. 



