388 FROM NEBULA TO NEBULA 



accumulated until all the water was congealed and all 

 that the winters had thereafter to do was to keep up the 

 status by merely making good the day's inroads. 



Of course, we cannot see the changes taking place on 

 the dark or hidden side of the satellite, but we can easily 

 judge of them from what we can perceive going on on 

 the areas we do see; and these latter are so easily un- 

 derstandable that a formal interpretation ought scarcely 

 to be required here. However, they are so interesting in 

 themselves that we shall consider some of them, by way 

 of illustration, to show how simply to construe even the 

 most complicated formations are. 



MARIA. These are really ancient ocean bowls from 

 which their whilom contents have taken flight in the form 

 of white flakes, which, settling on the dry surfaces, have 

 made these their permanent abode. Owing to the ge- 

 ometrical fact that the areas of small spheres are, rela- 

 tively to their mass, larger than in larger spheres, the 

 oceans of the moon were proportionally shallower, aver- 

 aging, in fact, only about a half mile in depth. As the 

 levels in these receded because of the snow exodus, 

 naturally the protuberances (of uneven height) on the 

 bottom became successively exposed with lapse of time, 

 creating new islands and new resting places for the flakes. 

 Now, it is self-evident that the nearer the pinnacles of 

 these originally submerged protuberances lay to the sur- 

 face of the sea, the sooner would they have become ex- 

 posed and the sooner would the flakes begin building up- 

 on them; but it is also true that, unlike on land surfaces, 

 such sub-aqueous irregularities are the exception rather 

 than the rule, hence snow mounds on the sea-beds should 

 not only be lesser in magnitude, but fewer in number. 



Inasmuch as, according to our premiss, there was 

 never a let-up to this peculiar process of ocean-robbing, 

 the time eventually arrived when the entire floor became 

 virtually uncovered, presenting in reality a land scene in 

 which every bar and sink-hole showed save, however, 

 that on all the emerged spots there rested columns of 

 snow, more or less squat, and that the sink-holes were 



