Year: 1874

The story of cracked and disintegra-
ting moon, which is made poblic through
the well known observatory at Marseil-
les, has points about ii which, if fully
assured as to their authenticity, will
arouse a good deal of discussion among
astronomers. The story is of Luigi Cac-
ciatore, a young man with an idea, and
fortune of about 5000, a student at the
Observatory of Marseilles. This young
man was so devoted to his idea that he
heaped his fortune upon it, and, with
telescope and other instruments, set sail
alone for the solitudes of southern seas.
Before embarking he handed to his old
instructor roll of manuscript, upon
which was inscribed the idea which the
youth pursued, and his reasons for enter
tanning it at the expense of his time and
fortune. He believed, speaking uncien-
tifcally, that the moon was altogether
more cracked than modern astronomers
imagined, and he went to the South seas
alone; that, being there in that region
where passed the deepest shadow, he
might see the sunlight peeping through
the cracked moon at the time Of the next
eclipse. He went away to the South,
even to Pitcairn's Island, erected his
rude observatory, gained an old sailor to
assist him, and they two, with eyes front
and instruments pointed, awaited the
shadow. 1t came. Straight through
the rugged rocks the ragged sunlight
shown as one sees a CLEAN through a
crack of door. A cry of joy came from
beneath the telescope. The sailor, turn
ed photographer, caught three negatives
of the penetrating sunbeam. The youth
with his idea possessed now proof, TO
him sufficient, that his belief was not a
vision but a scientific reality, and he
writes to his old instructor in France,
with all the enthusiasm of boy who
has stormed snow fort, and with all the
exclamation points of successful lover.
The young man saw enough during his
| lonely vigil on Pitcalrn's Island to make
him declare "that our lovely satellite is
not only shell, and not only shell
full of cracks, but a shell that is crushed
in upon some portions of its periphery,
and a shell that is now crumbling to
ruin with constant. a savage, fright
full velocity"


| The old Professor at Marseilles, COM
menting upon the youths observations
and records which accompanied this let
ter, says he has pushed his discovery
very near to the point of demonstration,
and then the old gentleman takes hand
in running things with cracked moon,
as follows:


''If the crumbling be connected with
and dependent upon any such intense
internal volcanic action as Luigi seems
to suspect, the final disruption would be
so violent as TO project some portions of
the moon sheer out their orbit and down
upon US with consequences of the most
serious character. Such an impact, if it
were of sufficient force, might in turn
dislodge the earth from its orbit, send
it grazing on a spiral into the sun, or
flung on hyperbole out into freezing
space. Or the same resistless force might,
in falling, crush in the surface of our
own planet, break through its crust and
deluge us with lava and steam, or suffo-
cate us with escaping gases from our
own subterranean laboratory"


Isnot that beautiful paragraph? The
reader may think that the moon is not
the only cracked thing in existence, but
restrain the thought, for the above oc-
ours just over the signature of Yvon De
Pontecoulant, of the Observatory of
Marseilles.