THE MOON AND LUNAR PHENOMENA. 85 



eruptive forces, the energy of which is supposed by many not to be extinct. The follow- 

 ing remarks occur in one of Herschel's papers, dated " April 19, 1787, 10 h 36' sidereal time. 

 I perceive three volcanoes in different places of the dark part of the new moon. Two 

 of them are either already nearly extinct, or otherwise in a state of going to break out, 

 which perhaps may be decided next lunation. The third shows an actual eruption of fire 

 or luminous matter. Again he says: "April 20, 1787, 10' 1 2' sidereal time. The 

 volcano burns with greater violence than last night. We may compute that the shining 

 or burning matter must be above three miles in diameter. The appearance of what I 

 have called the actual fire or eruption of a volcano exactly resembled a small piece of 

 burning charcoal, when it is covered by a very thin coat of white ashes, which frequently 

 adhere to it when it has been some time ignited ; and it had a degree of brightness, about 

 as strong as that with which such a coal would be seen to glow in faint daylight. All 

 the adjacent parts of the volcanic mountain seemed to be faintly illuminated by the 

 eruption, and were gradually more obscure as they lay at a greater distance from the 

 crater." 



The appearance of similar luminosities on the dark body of the moon has frequently 

 been observed. That described by Hefschel was at or near the centre of Aristarchus. 

 In the same region Cassini, Captain Kater, and Captain Smyth have noticed the same 

 phenomenon, which was intense enough to be seen with the 'naked eye by two persons in 

 the year 1794. As beheld by Captain Smyth, Dec. 22. 1835, whose view is subjoined, it 



resembled the light of a star of the ninth or tenth 

 magnitude, but at times was brilliant. During the 

 solar eclipse of July, 1842, a bright point, surrounded 

 with a circular scintillation, was seen on the south- 

 eastern region of the moon by the Toulouse astrono- 

 mers, which vanished before the eclipse was over. 

 " Was it," they ask, " a lunar volcano, the eruption 

 of which coincided with the moment of the eclipse ? " 

 On the same occasion M. Arago, at Perpignan, observed 

 on the edge of the moon's black disk a fiery protube- 

 rance, like an Alpine glacier illuminated by the setting 

 sun. M. Littrow, at Vienna, remarked the same 

 appearance ; and at Narbonne it had the aspect of 

 a distant lighthouse. It may be premature to pro- 

 nounce these to be instances of volcanic eruption ; still, that an age of disturbance, 

 arising from the action of forces similar to the upheaving agency to which the earth is 

 subject, has marked the past history of the moon, is proclaimed by ample evidence 

 that of the torn and disordered surface, the crater -like mountains, and the stratifications, 

 as if from successive depositions of ejected matter. 



How delusive the conceptions excited by the aspect of our satellite silently prosecuting 

 her nightly walk through the heavens. The silvery splendour cast over the face of 

 terrestrial nature, the moonlight painting the dark bosom of the waters with radiance 

 and lustrously streaming into the sombre glades of the forest, together with the resplendent 

 countenance of the planet, satisfying to the imaginative Easterns, as an image of feminine 

 loveliness, these suggest, through the eye to the mind, conceptions of graceful and 

 soothing scenery upon the surface of the lunar world. But the illusion vanishes when 

 we take the telescope. A drear reality is unfolded, at least so it seems to us, from which 

 the beautiful is absent, and the terrible appears. We must go to the wild and frightful 

 precipices of the Andean mountains, or to the charred and sterile declivities of Hecla, to 

 find analagous examples of lunar scenery, and with these specimens we must intermingle 



