i873-] Notices of Boohs, 517 



and most disturbed strata, he found the powers of his telescope 

 increased to a marvellous extent. Stars which he had looked for 

 in vain with the same instrument, in Edinburgh, now shone with 

 admirable distinctness and brilliancy. Three delicate striplings 

 of the discs of Jupiter and Saturn, which require in England the 

 powers of the largest telescopes, were clearly seen in the excel- 

 lent but small telescope he employed in his researches. It is 

 probably not too much to say that even if the Rosse telescope 

 were perfect in defining power, which unfortunately is very far 

 indeed from being the case, yet, on account of atmospheric dis- 

 turbance, instead of reducing the moon's distance to 40 miles, 

 it would in fact not be really effective enough to reduce that dis- 

 tance to less than 150 miles." Remembering all this, we see that 

 we must receive with great caution observations as to the colour of 

 the moon, the texture of its surface, and so on ; the apparently 

 smooth seas or sea-bottoms may in reality be hilly and irregular. 

 The most notable feature of the moon's surface is perhaps the 

 crateriform mountains, which Webb has divided into " walled or 

 bulwarked plains, ring mountains, craters, and saucer-shaped 

 depressions or pits. . . . Copernicus is one of the grandest 

 craters, 56 miles in diameter. It has a central mountain (2400 

 feet in height, according to Schmidt), two of whose six heads 

 are conspicuous; and a noble ring composed not only of terraces, 

 but distinct: heights separated by ravines ; the summit, a narrow 

 ridge, not quite insular, rises 11,000 feet above the bottom, the 

 height of Etna, after which Hevel named it. Schmidt gives it 

 nearly 12,800 feet, with a peak of 13,500 feet west, and an incli- 

 nation in some places of 6o°." 



Many attempts have been made to determine whether the 

 moon be inhabited or not. Herschel held the former opinion, 

 and many expected that Herschel's or Rosse's great reflector 

 would reveal something of the inhabitants. But in vain. Of 

 course the creatures themselves could not be visible, but large 

 cities might appear; and it has been argued that, as the force of 

 gravity is so much less at the surface of the moon than on the 

 earth, the lunar inhabitants might, without being unwieldy, be 

 much larger than our race of men. " Nor is this argument 

 wholly fanciful. A man of average strength and agility placed 

 on the lunar surface (and supposed to preserve his usual powers 

 under the somewhat inconvenient circumstances in which he 

 would there find himself) could easily spring four or five times 

 his own height, and could lift with ease a mass which, on the 

 earth, would weigh half a ton. Thus it would not only be pos- 

 sible for races of lunarians equal in strength to terrestrial races 

 to erect buildings much larger than those erected by man, but it 

 would be necessary to the stability of lunar dwellings that they 

 should be built on a massive and stupendous scale. Further, it 

 would be convenient that the lunarians^ by increased dimensions 

 and more solid proportions, should lose a portion of the super- 



VOL. ill. (N.S.) 3X 



