THE MOON. 499 



Attention has been repeatedly, and with justice, directed 

 to the fact, that in the absence of water upon the Moon 

 (even the rills, very narrow mostly rectilinear hollows, 49 are 

 not rivers), we must represent to ourselves the surface of the 

 Moon as being somewhat similarly constituted as was the Earth 

 in its primitive and most ancient condition, while yet unco- 

 vered flotz strata, by boulders and detritus, which were spread 

 out by the transporting force of the ebb and flood or currents. 

 Sun and Earth floods are naturally wanting ; where the liqnid 

 element is absent, slight coverings of decomposed conglo- 

 merates are scarcely conceivable. *n our mountain-chains, 

 upheaved upon fissures, partial groups of elevations are begin- 

 ing gradually to be discovered here and there, forming, as it 

 were, egg-shaped basins. How entirely different the Earth's 

 surface would have appeared to us if it were divested of the 

 flotz and tertiary formations ! 



The Moon, by the variety of its phases, and the more rapid 

 change of its relative position in the sky, animates and beau- 

 tifies the aspect of the firmament under every zone more 



according to the known dimensions of this monument (super- 

 ficial extent) would be, even at the point of commencement, 

 scarcely one-ninth of a second broad, and consequently invi- 

 sible. (Madler, in Schumacher's Jahrbuch for 1841, p. 264.) 

 Arago calls to mind, that with a 6,000-fold magnifying 

 power, which, nevertheless, could not be applied to the Moon 

 with proportionate results, the mountains upon the Moon 

 would appear to us just as Mont Blanc does to the naked eye 

 when seen from the Lake of Geneva. 



* The rills do not occur frequently; are at the utmost 

 thirty miles long; sometimes forked (Gassendi); seldom 

 resembling mineral veins (Triesnecker) ; always luminous; 

 do not cross mountains transversely ; are peculiar to the level 

 landscapes; are not characterized by any peculiarities at the 

 terminal points, without becoming broader or narrower* 

 (Beer and Madler, pp. 131, 225, and 249.) 



VOL. iv. t 



