Celestial Bodies 139 
ous brightness which we call collectively the fixed stars. Be- 
cause of their great remoteness whatever motions they have 
individually appear so inconsiderable to us over the course 
of a few centuries that they remain “fixed” in the sky, par- 
taking only of the general daily and yearly motions. Conse- 
quently the constellations which they form remain very much 
the same year after year. In the course of many centuries, 
however, even the constellations change their familiar 
shapes. 
THE MOON 
‘The Moon is the nearest of all our celestial neighbors, at a 
distance from the earth of about a quarter of a million miles. 
It is a globe only 2000 miles in diameter with mountains, 
plains, cliffs, deserts, a very rugged landscape indeed, but 
decidedly distasteful to a sailor because there is no ocean 
there at all! Not a river, lake, or pond for that matter. And 
it never rains there either, because there is no water and no 
atmosphere. It is a hard doctrine to teach and believe, but 
all the evidence points to the fact that the beautiful silvery 
moon, sublime and serene as it appears, is only a barren 
desert, utterly devoid of any life as we know it, suffering 
from great extremes of temperature and exposed to a constant 
barrage of meteorites and debris which easily reaches the 
surface without hindrance because there is no atmosphere 
to slow it down or consume it in friction-generated fire. 
CELESTIAL DESOLATION 
A pair of powerful field glasses brings the dismal scene of 
the moon’s surface into view. The most striking of the lunar 
features is the large number of pits or craters that are observ- 
able in all portions of the disk. Some of these craters are, by 
