Curiosities of Science. 73 



Newton is to the moon's diameter, its peak would be more 

 than sixteen miles high. 



Avago calls to mind, that with a 6000-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. 



We sometimes observe more than half the surface of the 

 moon, the eastern and northern edges being more visible at 

 one time, and the western or southern at another. By means 

 of this libration we are enabled to see the annular mountain 

 Malapert (which occasionally conceals the moon's south pole), 

 the arctic landscape round the crater of Gioja, and the large 

 gray plane near Endymion, which conceals in superficial extent 

 the mare vaporum. 



Three-sevenths of the moon are entirely concealed from our 

 observation ; and must always remain so, unless some new and 

 unexpected disturbing causes come into play. Humboldt. 



The first object to which Galileo directed his telescope was tho 

 mountainous parts of the moon, when he showed how their summits 

 might be measured : he found in the moon some circular districts sur- 

 rounded on all sides by mountains similar to the form of Bohemia. 

 The measurements of the mountains were made by the method of the 

 tangents of the solar ray. Galileo, as Helvetius did still later, measured 

 the distance of the summit of the mountains from the boundary of the 

 illuminated portion at the moment when the mountain summit was 

 first struck by the solar ray. Humboldt found no observations of the 

 lengths of the slwdows of the mountains : the summits were " much 

 higher than the mountains on our earth " The comparison is remark- 

 able, since, according to Biccioli, very exaggerated ideas of the height 

 of our mo;.:;tains were then entertained. Galileo like all other observers 

 up to the close of the eighteenth century, believed in the existence of 

 many seas and of a lunar atmosphere. 



THE MOON AND THE WEATHER. 



The only influence of the Moon on the Weather of which 

 we have any decisive evidence is the tendency to disappearance 

 of clouds under the full moon, which Sir John Herschel refers 

 to its heat being much more readily absorbed in traversing 

 transparent media than direct solar heat, and being extinguished 

 in the upper regions of our atmosphere, never reaches the sur- 

 face of the atmosphere at all. 



THE MOON'S ATTRACTION. 



Mr. G. P. Bond of Cambridge, by some investigations to 

 ascertain whether the Attraction of the Moon has any effect 

 upon the motion of a pendulum, and consequently upon the 

 rate of a clock, has found the last to be changed to the amount 



