386 FROM NEBULA TO NEBULA 



stupendousness of the Apennine range, the strange im- 

 munity from petty bombardment of the vast areas called 

 maria, the wonderful chain of bluffs hemming in the 

 maria, the several-hundred-miles-long ravines, and the 

 like. Least of all does it account for the thousand and 

 one diurnal variations in the map and color of the moon, 

 of which, thanks to such keen and conscientious observers 

 as Professor Pickering, the recorded evidence is rapidly 

 accumulating since the first edition of this book ap- 

 peared. 



THE MOON'S TOPOGRAPHY EXPLAINED 



Paradoxical as it may sound, the real surface of the 

 moon is as smooth as that of Mars! Equally paradoxi- 

 cal may ring the statement that the lunar oceans have 

 risen from their beds and taken up their permanent abode 

 on the dry land. In plain English, they have disap- 

 peared, not into outer space, but into SNOW, and the 

 mountains and craters that we see are nothing more nor 

 less than the fantastic sculpturings of one Jack Frost. 

 Like the man in the fable who could not see the woods for 

 the trees, so astronomers have been all along failing to 

 see the lunar oceans because of the heaped-up snow ! The 

 text books tell us that snowflakes are so exceedingly por- 

 ous, and absorb so much air in their creation, that a single 

 inch of rainfall is equivalent to a ten-inch fall of snow. 

 Fancy, if you please, some strange freak of Nature 

 whereby all the waters of our oceans and rivers and lakes 

 should be converted into the "beautiful" and settle upon 

 our continents and islands never to return again as 

 water to its ancient beds, what a wonderful and strange 

 sight our earth would present ! 



This is precisely what has happened to our moon. 

 This is why her surface is so magnificently sculptured, 

 why we see no rain-clouds or oceans upon her, why her 

 atmosphere has ' ' disappeared " why, in short, she pre- 

 sents the curious aspect and asperities she does. 



