Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1895-07-27
however, are remote contingencies with
which we are not at present concerned.
Use of PhotogrAphx.

Use of Photography.
In the history of the moon as in that of
the earth, time came when 1T was cooled
sufficiently for the formation of a crusted
surface it's interior being still molten.
Thanks to photography, the telescope as
pect of the moon is familiar to thousands
of persons who have never enjoyed the
pleasure of themselves looking at the moon
through a telescope. Every one knows that
its surface Is diversified, like the earth's,
with plains and mountainous regions.
The lunar mountains are for the most
part of roughly circular figure; they form
vast saucer-shaped amphitheaters not I'M
frequently thirty, forty or fifty miles
across, and having, as a rule, at their CEN
rise at a great height above their COM
paratively level floors. These are usually
spoken of as ''craters," and they are COM
monty supposed to be of a volcanic forma-
ton.
Besides these so-called "craters," the
roughly terraced walls of which Else in
some instances to the height of over four
miles, and the more extensive walled
plains" which are without central peaks,
there are scattered all over the moon over
it's plains as well as over its highlands-;n-
Vulnerable circular depressions, ranging in
size from hollows twenty miles across to
pitholes discernible only with large tele-
scope which give to the moons face a
curious pock-marked appearance Terres-
trial geography or geology has no parallel
for these singular lunar markings.
The Bomba rdment Theory.
It is quite evident that the moon has
passed through a series of experiences very
different from those through which the
earth has passed, or, at any rate, those
which have left any traces in it's existing
rocks. How much Of this scarIfication OF
its surface can be explained as the effects
Of shrinkage as the moon cooled, and
of volcanic action, ontinuing until the
moons internal fires become finally
extinct, and whether some at least OF
its 'pock-Inarks" are not due to eXter.
nal causes, are interesting questions
on which opinions are still divided. We
know that the earth is even now daily
lombarded by millions of meteors-bodies
which it encounters in its passage around
tho sun, and which, for the most part, are
so minute that they are consumed by the
heat engendered by the friction of the all
before reaching the earth's surface. The
This Commandment theory" as it may be
called, is. perhaps, the most plausible OF
several which have been put forth in ex
PLANTATION Of the singularly pitted surface
of our satellite.
The generally accepted explanation Of
the disapI earance of the lunar oceans is
that their waters are now slowed away in
the moons Interior They have been alb.
SOIDeQ by It's rOckS, now stone cold, OIL
| a portion of them exists, perhaps in a
frozen form in the numerous assures an6
caverns with which the moons interior is
doubtless honeycombed.
To account for the disappearance of the
lunar atmosphere has not been so easy A
very ingenious-perhaps a sufiicient-ex
PLANTATION has lately been offered as a sort
of corolary of the "kinetic theory" OF
gases: To give the explanation complete
would here be impracticable. 1t amounts
to this: The incessantly active molecules
which formed the moons gaseous envelope
have, in the process of time, bounded Off
into space, those on the outer border of the
atmosphere having been constantly spring
irg outward, with a velocity too great tc
be entirely checked by the moons attrac.
tive force until now the last or nearly the
| last. of these rapidly moving molecules
have thus unceremoniously taken their de.
parture =,