29 
Ordinary Meeting, November 15, 1864. 
R. Angus Smith, Ph.D., F.R.S., &c., President, in the 
Chair. 
The following letter from Mr. James Nasmyth, C.E., 
addressed to Mr. Joseph Sidebotham, and dated November 
8 th, was read : — 
I had intended to have sent the Manchester Literary and 
Philosophical Society “ a Paper,” embodying some ideas I 
entertain in regard to the vast antiquity of the features and 
details of the lunar surface, hut in attempting to put my 
views on this subject into the formal shape of “ a Paper,” 
somehow or other my pen won’t say what I want it to 
express, so I am fain to get out of the difficulty by sending 
you an abstract of my views on this subject in the form of 
a letter. 
The views I entertain on the subject in question are these, 
namely, that as a direct consequence of the small mass of 
the moon, and its comparatively large surface, it must have 
parted with its original cosmical heat with much greater 
rapidity than in the case of the earth, and consequently the 
moon must have assumed a final condition of surface struc- 
ture ages before the earth had ceased from its original molten 
condition. And as the moon had in all reasonable proba- 
bility never possessed an atmosphere or water envelope (it 
certainly has none such now), while the earth has both, the 
action of the earth’s atmosphere, and especially that of its 
ocean when it existed in the first instance as a vast vapour 
envelope, ere the earth had cooled down so as to permit the 
Proceedings— Lit. & Phil. Society— Voe. IY.— No. 4— Session, 1864-5. 
