494 COSMOS. 



The relative height of the elevations, in proportion to the 

 diameters of the Moon and the Earth, gives the remarkable 

 result, that since in the four times smaller satellite the 

 highest peaks are only 3,836 feet lower than those of the 

 Earth, the lunar mountains amount to 3--^, the mountains on 

 the Earth to Y^ST of the planetary diameters. 48 Among the 

 1,095 points of elevation already measured upon the Moon, I 

 find 39 are higher than Mont Blanc (16,944 feet) and 6 

 higher than 19,000 feet. The measurements were effected 

 either by light tangents (by determining the distance 

 of the illuminated mountain-peak on the right side of the 

 Moon from the boundary of the light), or by the length of 

 the shadows. The former method was already made use of 

 by Galileo, as is seen from his letter to the Father Grienberger 

 upon the Montuositd della Luna. 



According to Midler's careful measurements by means of 

 the length of the shadowy the culminating points of the 

 Moon are in descending order at the south edge, very near the 

 Pole, Dorfel and Leibnitz, 24,297 feet; the annular mountain 

 Newton, where a part of the deep hollow is never lighted, 

 neither by the Sun nor the Earth's disc, 23,830 feet ; 

 Casatus, eastward of Newton^ 22,820 feet; Calippus, in the 

 Caucasian chain, 20,396 feet; the Appenines, between 17,903 

 and 19,182 feet. It must be remarked here, that in the 

 entire absence of a general niveau-line (the plane of equal 

 distance from the centre of a cosmical body, as is presented 



u The highest peak of the Himalayas, and (up to the pre- 

 sent time!) of the whole Earth, Kinchin-junga, is, according 

 to Waugh's recent measurement, 4,406 toises, or 28,178 

 English feet ; the highest peak among the Moon's mountains 

 vs, according to Madler, 3,800 toises (exactly 4 geographical 

 miles). The diameter of the Moon is 1,816, that of the 

 Earth 6.872 geographical miles: whence it follows for the 

 Moon -", for the Earth 



