The Wellington enterprise. [volume] (Wellington, Ohio) 1867-188?, 1883-01-03

these astronomers turned their steroscoees
upon the edge of the moon az it hid the
sun on the 18th of May they perceived
indications, in the Strengthening of GER
tain lines of the spectrum, of the exist
ence of an atmosphere on the moon. This
observation, though not unprecedented,
was hailed with satisfaction by those who
had always contendcd that the moon was
not as dead as it seemed. The existence
of an atmosphere would explain the phe-
nomenon which Mr.. Williams witnessed
in the valley of Plato, as well as varioug
other equally singular observations which
have been made by students of the moon
from time to time.
But this is not all. On the 18th of
May, two days after the eclipse, John G.
Jackson, of Delaware, while studying
the moon, as he had been accustomed to
do for years, with rejecting telescor.,
was surprised to see near the western
edge of the disk, and over a portion of
the fiat region known as the Sea of Crises,
something which he described as feath-
ery-looking cloud. Just two months
later he saw similar appearance in the
same place. And now Mr.. L. E. Trouve-
lot, well-known astronomer, comment
ing upon Stanley Williams observation,
says that he has more than once witnessed
similar appearances upon the moons disk.
He has seen lunar landscapes lose their
distinctness as if thin clouds were float
ing over them, at once, around the crater
of Kant, ne saw what may have been a
rare vapor slightly tinged with purple.
He has also seen another large crater IL
lumited with faint purple light. Mr..
Trouvelot thinks these various appear
ances are manifestations of a lunar at
mosphere of nature yet unknown.
Curious observations of q similar ma
ture can be found scattered here and there
in astronomical recordsreaching back more
than century, but they have generally
been looked upon with distrust or totally
disregarded. These recent observations
give them renewed interest and tend to vim
dicate their correctness. If team be shown
that the moon has an atmosphere, Sir
William HerschePs idea that our satellite
is inhabitable will not be deemed so RI
diculous as it has seemed to some modern
astronomers. We should not expect to
obtain any confirmation of the observa-
tiOns of the German telescopist who be-
lieved he had discovered big city and
great military works in the moon, but
reasons might be shown for thinking that
the moon supports life peculiar to ITSELF
The more possibility of such thing is
somewhat startling, for the moon is really
4 very near neighbor to the earth. Few,
perhaps, realize how close we are to an
other world besides the earth, but it is a
very narrow span of space that separates
US from the moon. The mean distance
is only 100000 miles, or less than ten
times the circuit of the earth, and only
about eighty times as far as from here to
San Francisco. Not few sea Captains
have probably sailed as far as the distance
from the earth to the moon. And yet 50
close at hand as this there is world diff
fering so widely from the one we dwell
upon that we can only admit the posi-
bility of its being inhabited by assuming
that its inhabitants are as unlike our
selves as their world is unlike ours-M
Y Sun.