APPENDIX.
THE MOON AS KNOWN AT THE PRESENT TIME.
"Ye sacred muses, with whose beauty fir'd,
My soul is ravish'd, and my brain inspir'd.
Whose priest I am, whose holy fillets wear;
Would you your poet's first petition hear;
Give me the ways of wandering stars to know:
The depths of heav'n above, and earth below.
Teach me the various labours of the moon,
And whence proceed th' eclipses of the gun.
Why flowing tides prevail upon the main,
And in what dark recess they shrink again.
What shakes the solid earth, what cause delays
The summer nights, and shortens winter days."
The picture on the title-page is probably the best and minutest view of the moon, that has ever been laid before the public. Most of our readers are aware that the mountains and hollows of the moon have been accurately and thoroughly mapped by astronomers, and baptized by appropriate names. For the benefit of meritorious students of astronomical geography, we subjoin the names of all those which have been christened. At the present season it will amply repay the possessor of a small telescope to identify the several localities with the aid of the map.
In olden time the moon was a goddess. Whatever the ignorant mind of the time was incapable of grasping was supernatural. Thus arose the pale, chaste Deity of the Night, robed in virgin white, roaming dreamily under the partial shade of trees, loving to see her fair image reflected in streams, and shedding a complacent light on tender meetings. We are not heathens—far from it: but who among us has not at some time or other paid homage to the Queen of Night [1], and thanked her for the gentle light which has shown the way to some fair hand.
We say, in blunt scientific terms, that she—or it—is a satellite of the earth, suspended in her—or its—present position by the contrasted attraction of the sun and the earth. This is the unromantic version of the naked fact.
There was a time when the earth was an uncomfortable semi-incandescent mass, in the act of cooling off for practical purposes. The atmosphere was tropical throughout the globe. All things were intensely impregnated—or, as the philosophers say, supersaturated—with carbon. Between the dry land and the waters there was no division. There was no ocean, and consequently to continents. All was bot mud, with here and there a lake or a short river, and here and there a dry, parched, torrid eminence. In those days there were animals and plants, but no human beings. Both animals and plants were like the age in which they flourished—to our notions monstrous, Monsters were the rule, both in the vegetable and the animated world. Creatures were born, and grew to sizes which dwarf the elephant. Plants thrust their beads above the mud, and, in that carboniferous atmosphere, attained heights which would have towered above the tallest trees of our forests. But in proportion to the rapidity of their growth was the brevity of their life; for these were the days of earthquakes and terrestrial convulsions. Probably no day elapsed without some earthquake or volcanic eruption.
The light of day was dull and obscured. Masses of opaque matter floated through the atmosphere as thickly as dust specks float through a ray of sunlight in a darkened room.[3] The hot air, thick and dull, hung a listless mist over the face of the earth, which was even then almost without form and void. When the sun went down, dense darkness covered the earth. There was no lesser light to rule the night; dim twinklings in the far distance, hardly piercing the pall which wrapped our planet, were the only contrasts to the Egyptian blackness of the dark hours.
But the internal fires which sprung from the vitals of the earth almost supplied the want of a nocturnal luminary. It is probable that there were but few spots on the globe which were out of view of some flaming volcano. We count the active volcanoes by integers. When we have enumerated Etna, Vesuvius, Hecla, Jorullo, Colime, and one or two others, we have reached the end of our list. In the days of Homer the volcanoes were counted by scores; in the carboniferous age they may have, must have, flourished by hundreds and thousands. That vast incandescent mass, of which the crust only bad cooled, kept boiling op every few hours, and furiously pouring out the vials of its wrath upon an earth inhabited by transitory creatures. Go where the traveller may, he will still find traces of this terrible age. That tell-tale rock—"the trap"—is peculiar to no meridian; and from the Hudson's Bay territories nearly to Cape Magellan, from Spitzbergen to Borneo, either this, or some mountain range of volcanic origin, here with scoriæ disseminated through the more regular formations, there with copper or gold held in a native state in half-decayed quartz, tell a very legible story of the time when all the component parts of the earth were in a fluid state, and were thrown off by the boiling wags beneath as a kettle throws off froth and scum.
There came a day when the under crust could no longer bear the weight of the mass which, after being thrown off daily, returned, by the force of gravitation, to the surface of its parent. A time came when the incandescent and inchoate planet-if so daring a figure may be ventured —felt the necessity of unusually strenuous measures. It gathered all its fiery energies, and mustered all its fearful strength. The effect was universal, not local. With such bodies distances of 25,000 miles must be trifling, and the earth's meridian—a paltry 8000 miles—not worth men. tioning. One can imagine the purpose and effort being common to the entire molter and raging mass.
It came at last. After throes of inconceivable agony, with a roar and & convulsion which must have destroyed every living thing then existent upon the face of the planet, in the midst of general chaos, confusion, and desolation, the earth relieved itself. It tore from its half-cooled surface immense masses, and projected them with monstrous force into space; not on one side alone, but on all. Lumps of earth four and five miles in thickness, and thousands of miles long and wide, were in an instant forced upwards with such force as to pass beyond the circle of the earth's attraction. These various masses, thus launched into space, soon felt the attraction of each other, and assembled together. They met, and, agreeably to the sublime law of celestial bodies, remained suspended in space at the point where the attraction of the earth meets that of the sun. That other celestial law which forbids the torpidity of any atom of matter compelled the aggregated mass to revolve, and the revolution forced the mass into a spherical shape.
Thus the moon came into being. An offshoot from the earth, it pays homage to its parent by revolving round it, and reflecting back to it a part of the sun's light during the period when that luminary is obscured to us. Had the force with which its substance was expelled from the body of the earth been less, it would have returned to our surface, just as those fragments of matter called aerolites do at regular intervals; had that force been greater, it would have entered upon the vast area which is the domain of the sun, and would have been attracted to that great cosmical body, and been fused by its intense heat. It was sent abroad with precisely the force necessary to sustain it in equilibrio between the earth and the sun, and hence it is "the lesser light which rules the night."
This is not the only service which it renders us. By its creation it caused great hollows in the surface of the earth. Into these hollows the Waters which lay on the face of the deep naturally gathered, and became oceans, lakes, seas, and rivers. The cavities drained the earth of the moisture which had rendered it unfit for the habitation of the higher order of vertebrated creatures. Thus by degrees were formed the great Atlantic and Pacific, the Northern and the Southern oceans, leaving here and there tracts of cool, dry land for man to inhabit at the word of his Creator. Nor did the office of the moon stop here. While it was upheld in space by the attraction of the earth, it returned the compliment by exercising a reciprocal attraction upon the waters for which it had created beds. With the beautiful regularity which is the characteristic of heavenly bodies, it affected them at uniform intervals, causing the tides to flow and to ebb, and to vibrate between the spring and the neap flow. Lastly, it relieved the earth of a vast quantity of superincumbent matter, equal, in fact, to over one-fiftieth of the whole bulk of the planets One must imagine the earth in the condition of a gentleman who has dined copiously, and whose interior is troubled by an unusual burden; the convulsion which led to the creation of the moon is similar to the effect of the dose which the gentleman, if he be wise, will instantly take.
In departing from us, and setting up for herself, the moon forgot some articles of baggage which were essential to her future comfort and prosperity. Among these were air and water. How we came by these two useful commodities it were hard to say.
This is made quite certain by the discoveries of astronomers. Rains, dews, oceans, lakes, bail, snow, clouds, are all unknown to the moon. Nothing shields its surface from the burning rays of the sun. Wherever the light of that fierce luminary penetrates the moon's surface is incessantly hot.
Of volcanic origin, the moon is true to its descent. It is full of volcanoes, most of which, however, perhaps from a conviction of the uselessdess of further action—there being nothing to destroy, and no one even to see their explosions are now silent and torpid. But they wrought out their destiny so long and so faithfully, that the surface of the moon is frightfully disfigured and uneven, Switzerland is a prairie compared to the smoothest part of the moon's surface. It is nothing but incessant mountain and hollow. Lunar Alps and Rocky Mountains intersect every few miles of the surface. The Himalayas would be unnoticed among the gigantic ranges which ornament the lunar superficies. And the projections, mighty as they are, are but trifling in comparison with the hollows. It would seem as though the moon, with apish weakness, had tried to imitate the earth in throwing off space for rivers and oceans —forgetting that it contained no water to fill the cavities. Astronomers have made the most extraordinary discoveries in reference to these lunar hollows. Some of them appear to be about fifty miles deep, and a hundred miles or so wide, with precipitous sides. Mitchell has vividly described these terrible places. Those who have looked over a precipice a few hundred feet in depth may perhaps form some rude idea of what it must be to gaze down into a hole fifty miles deep—so deep that the bottom would almost escape the eye, were there an intervening atmosphere —a great, monstrous cave, with no vegetation either on the borders or on the top, or on the sides or on the bottom; no life of any kind, not even the least sound, to break the endless monotony of silence—everywhere dull, warm scoriæ, lava, and stones of volcanic origin. But even these are the smallest of the lunar cavities. Latterly, acute astronomers, with improved instruments, have gazed into holes in the moon's surface, and estimated them to be no less than two hundred and fifty and three hundred miles deep, with fissures in them through which the sunlight penetrated.
Fancy the scene! Well may it have been termed the abomination of desolation! Surely this fair earth, with all its gloomy places and all its dreary scenes, contains nothing so overwhelming in its terrible despair as the moon. And who, gazing at its wild white face as it emerges from the cover of a cloud, would deem it so sad and desolate a sphere?
There are no "men in the moon." There cannot be, for they could not exist without air and water. 'Tis a pity, for the sight of this planet of ours, thirteen times the size which the moon appears to us, as fair, and bright, and shining as our nightly luminary, would be a sight worth seeing.
Science has made such progress, and common sense has so far kept pace with it, that the old idea that this was the only inhabited sphere in the universe is now completely exploded. There is no reason to believe that our planet is the only one in our solar system which is devoted to a useful career; nor is there any ground for imagining that our sun is the only one of the myriad of suds we see every night, which gives light, and heat, and happiness to human creatures. On the contrary, the supreme wisdom of the Deity affords a fair presumption that this little planet of ours is but as a grain of sand among the worlds which have been created for the glory of God, and that each planet after its kind is fitted for the habitation of creatures whose office and purpose it is to thank and bless Him for their existence. Moons may be an exception for a time.
Of all this we know but little, and can only conjecture vaguely. As science advances, we may have telescopic instruments so superior to those now in use that we shall be able to decipher the moon's surface as globe, and that each day and year of life is measured by its revolutions There are few who believe that the great luminary of the firmament, whose restless activity they daily witness, is an immovable star, controlling, by its solid mass, the primary planets of our system, and forming, as it were, the gnomon of the great dial which measures the thread of life and the tenure of empires. Fewer still believe that each of the million of stars—those atoms of light which the telescope can scarcely descry—are the centres of planetary systems that may equal or surpass our own; and still smaller is the number who believe that the solid pavement of the globe upon which we nightly slumber is an elastic crist, imprisoning fires and forces which have often burst forth in tremendous energy, and are, at this very instant, struggling to escape-now finding an outlet in volcanic fires—now heaving and shaking the earth —now upraising islands and continents, and gathering strength perhaps for some final outburst which may shatter our earth in pieces, or change its form, or scatter its waters over the land. And yet these are truths than which there is nothing truer, and nothing more worthy of our study.
In order to learn, then, what is the constitution, and what has been or may be the probable history of the various worlds in our firmament, we must study the constitution and physical history of our own. The men of limited reason who believed that the earth was created and launched into its ethereal course when man was summoned to its occupation, must have either denied altogether the existence of our solar system, or have regarded all its planets as coeval with their own, and as but the ministers to its convenience. Science, however, has now corrected this error, and liberated the pious mind from its embarrassments. The Palæontologist—the student of ancient life—has demonstrated, by evidence not to be disputed, that the earth had been inhabited by animals and adorned with plants during immeasurable cycles of time antecedent to the creation of man—that when the volcano, the earthquake, and the flood, had destroyed and buried them, nobler forms of life were created to undergo the same fiery ordeal:—and that, by a series of successive creations and catastrophes, the earth was prepared for the residence of man, and the rich materials in its bosom elaborated for his use, and thrown within his grasp. In the age of our own globe, then, we see the age of its brother planets, and in the antiquity of our own system we see the antiquity of the other systems of the universe. In our catastrophes, too, we recognise theirs, and in our advancing knowledge and progressive civilization, we witness the development of the universal globe, and that each day and year of life is measured by its revolutions There are few who believe that the great luminary of the firmament, whose restless activity they daily witness, is an immovable star, controlling, by its solid mass, the primary planets of our system, and forming, as it were, the gnomon of the great dial which measures the thread of life and the tenure of empires. Fewer still believe that each of the million of stars—those atoms of light which the telescope can scarcely descry—are the centres of planetary systems that may equal or surpass our own; and still smaller is the number who believe that the solid pavement of the globe upon which we nightly slumber is an elastic crist, imprisoning fires and forces which have often burst forth in tremendous energy, and are, at this very instant, struggling to escape-now finding an outlet in volcanic fires—now heaving and shaking the earth —now upraising islands and continents, and gathering strength perhaps for some final outburst which may shatter our earth in pieces, or change its form, or scatter its waters over the land. And yet these are truths than which there is nothing truer, and nothing more worthy of our study.
In order to learn, then, what is the constitution, and what has been or may be the probable history of the various worlds in our firmament, we must study the constitution and physical history of our own. The men of limited reason who believed that the earth was created and launched into its ethereal course when man was summoned to its occupation, must have either denied altogether the existence of our solar system, or have regarded all its planets as coeval with their own, and as but the ministers to its convenience. Science, however, has now corrected this error, and liberated the pious mind from its embarrassments. The Palæontologist—the student of ancient life—has demonstrated, by evidence not to be disputed, that the earth had been inhabited by animals and adorned with plants during immeasurable cycles of time antecedent to the creation of man—that when the volcano, the earthquake, and the flood, had destroyed and buried them, nobler forms of life were created to undergo the same fiery ordeal:—and that, by a series of successive creations and catastrophes, the earth was prepared for the residence of man, and the rich materials in its bosom elaborated for his use, and thrown within his grasp. In the age of our own globe, then, we see the age of its brother planets, and in the antiquity of our own system we see the antiquity of the other systems of the universe. In our catastrophes, too, we recognise theirs, and in our advancing knowledge and progressive civilization, we witness the development of the universal mind—the march of the immortal spirit to its final destiny of glory or of shame.
The following are the names which have been given to the mountains and valleys, or hollows, in the moon, and which are referred to in the accompanying picture [See title page].
MOUNTAINS.
- The Apennines.
- The Caucasts.
- The Alps.
- Taurus
- Hæmus.
- The Altai Mountains,
- The Cordilleras.
- The Riphæ Mountains.
- The Carpathians.
- The Hercynian Mountains.
HOLLOWS, OR VALLEYS.
- A. The Crisian Sea.
- B. The Sea of Fertility (!!).
- C. The Sea of Nectar.
- D. The Tranquil Sea.
- E. Tho Serene Sea.
- F. The Sea of Dreams.
- G. The Sea of Death
- H. The Dreamy Marsh.
- I. The Cold Sea.
- K. The Sea of Vapors.
- L. The Middle Bay.
- M. The Sea of Clouds.
- N. The Sea of Mist.
- O. The Bay of Epidemics.
- P. The Stormy Ocean,
- Q. The Showery Sea.
- R. The Sea of Rainbows.
- S. The Sea of Dews.
- T. Humboldt's Sea.
As will be seen, astronomers have done what they could to relieve the dreariness of nature by a free indulgence in fanciful names, Dr. Chalmers, speaking of the advantages derived from the discovery of the telescope and microscope, says, " The one led me to see a system in every star. The other leads me to see a world in every atom. The one taught me that this mighty globe, with the whole burden of its people, and of its countries, is but a grain of sand on the high field of immensity. The other teaches me that every grain of sand may harbor within it the tribes and families of a busy population. The one told me of the insignificance of the world I tread upon. The other redeems it from all its insignificance; for it tells me that in the leaves of every forest, and in the flowers of every garden, and in the waters of every rivulet, there are worlds teeming with life, and numberless as are the glories of the firmament. The one has suggested to me that beyond and above all that is visible to man, there may lie fields of creation which sweep immeasurably along, and carry the impress of the Almigbty's hand to the remotest scenes of the universe. The other suggests to me, that within and beneath all that minuteness which the aided eye of man has been able to explore, there may lie a region of invisibles; and that could we draw aside the mysterious curtain which shrouds it from our senses, wo might there see a theatre of as many wonders as astronomy has unfolded; a universe within the compass of a point so small, as to elude all the powers of the microscope, but where the wonder-working God finds room for the exercise of all bis attributes, wbere he can raise another mechanism of worlds, and fill and animate them all with the evidences of his glory."
Opinions of the American Press Respecting the Foregoing Discovery.
"Herschel's Great Discoveries.—We are too much pleased with the remarks of the sensible, candid, and scientific portions of the public press upon the extracts which we have published relative to these wonders of the age, to direct our attention very severely to-day to that sceptical class of our cotemporaries to whom none of these attributes can be ascribed. Consummate ignorance is always incredulous to the higher order of scientific discoveries, because it cannot possibly comprehend them. Its mental thorax is quite capacious enough to swallow any dogmas, however great, that are given upon the authority of names; but it strains most perilously to receive the great truths of reason and science. We scarcely ever knew a very ignorant person who would believe in the existence of those myriads of invisible beings which inhabit a drop of water, and every grain of dust, until he bad actually beheld them through the microscope by which they are developed. Yet these very persons will readily believe in the divinity of Matthias the prophet, and in the most improbable credenda of extravagant systems of faith. The Journal of Commerce, for instance, says it cannot believe in these great discoveries of Dr. Herschel, yet it believes and defends the innocence of the murderer Avery. These who in a former age imprisoned Galileo for asserting his great discoveries with the telescope, and determined upon sentencing him to be burnt alive, nevertheless believed that Simon Magus actually flew in the air by the aid of the devil, and that when that aid was withdrawn he fell to the ground and broke his neck. The great mechanical discoverer, Worcester, obtained no credence for his theories in bis day, though they are now being continually demonstrated by practical operation. Happily, however, those who impudently and ignorantly deny the great discoveries of Herschel, are chiefly to be found among those whose faith or whose scepticism, would never be received as a guide for the opinions of other men. From among that portion of the public press whose intelligence and acquirements render them competent judges of the great scientific questions now before the community, we extract the following frank declarations of their opinions."—New York Sun, Sep. 1, 1835.
"No article, we believe, has appeared for years, that will command so general a perusal and publication, Sir John has added a stock of know. ledge to the present age that will immortalize his name, and place it high on the page of science."—Daily Advertiser.
"Discoveries in The Moon.—We commence to-clay the publication of an interesting article which is stated to have been copied from the Edinburgh Journal of Science, and which made its first appearance here in a cotemporary journal of this city. It appears to carry intrinsic evi. dence of being an authentic document."- Mercantile Advertiser.
"Stupendous Discovery In Astronomy.—We have read with unspeakable emotions of pleasure and astonishment, an article from the last Edinburgh Scientific Journal, containing an account of the recent discoveries of Sir John Herschel at the Cape of Good Hope."—Albany Daily Advertiser.
"It is quite proper that the Sun should be the means of shedding so much light on the Moon. That there should be winged people in the Moon does not strike us as more wonderful than the existence of such a race of beings on earth; and that there does or did exist such a race rests on the evidence of that most veracious of voyagers and circumstantial of chroniclers, Peter Wilkins, whose celebrated work not only gives an account of the general appearance and habits of a most interesting tribe of flying Indians, but also of all those more delicate and engaging traits which the author was enabled to discover by reason of the conjugal relations he entered into with one of the females of the winged tribe."—N. Y. Evening Post.
"We think we can trace in it marks of transatlantic origin."—N. Y. Commercial Advertiser.
"The writer (Dr. Andrew Grant) displays the most extensive and accurate knowledge of astronomy, and the description of Sir John's recently improved instruments, the principle of which the inestimable improvements were founded, the account of the wonderful discoveries in the moon, &c., are all probable and plausible, and have an air of intense verisimilitude."—N. Y. Times.
"Great Astronomical Discoveries—By the late arrivals from England there has been received in this country a supplement to the Edinburgh Journal of Science containing intelligence of the most as tounding interest from Prof. Herschel's observatory at the Cape of Good Hope. ..... The promulgation of these discoveries creates a new era in astronomy and science generally."—New Yorker.
"Our enterprising neighbors of the Sun, we are pleased to learn, are likely to enjoy a rich reward from the late lunar discoveries. They deserve all they receive from the public—they are worthy.'"—N. Y. Spirit of '76.
"After all, however, our doubts and incredulity may be a wrong to the learned astrononer, and the circumstances of this wonderful dig. covery may be correct. Let us do him justice, and allow him to tell his story in his own way."—N.Y. Sunday News.
"The article is said to be an extract from a supplement to the Edinburgh Journal of Science. It sets forth difficulties encountered by Sir John, on obtaining his glass castings for his great telescope, with magvifying powers of 42,000. The account, excepting the magnifying power, has been before published" [i. e. in the Supplement to the Edinburgh Journal of Science.—Ed. Sun].—U. S. Gazette.
"It is not worth while for us to express an opinion as to the truth or falsity of the narrative, as our readers can, after an attentive perasal of the whole story, decide for themselves. Whether true or false, the article is written with consummate ability, and possesses intense interest."—Philadelphia Inquirer.
"These are but a handful of the innumerable certificates of credence, and of complimentary testimonials with which the universal press of the country is loading our tables. Indeed, we find very few of the public papers express any other opinion. We have named the Journal of Commerce as an exception, because it not only ignorantly doubted the authenticity of the discoveries, but ill-naturedly said that we bad fabricated them for the purpose of making a noise and drawing attention to our paper.
Col. Webb of the Courier and Inquirer has said nothing upon the subject; but he only feels the more, and we are this moment assured that he has made arrangements with the proprietors of the Charleston steam-packets to take the splendid boat William Gibbons of that line, and charter her for the Cape of Good Hope, whither he is going with all his family—including Hoskin.
"We yesterday extracted from the celebrated Supplement, a mathematical problem demonstrating an entirely new, and the only true method of measuring the height of the lunar mountains. We were not then aware of its great importance as a demonstration, also, of the authenticity of the great discoveries. But several eminent mathematicians have since called and assured us, that it is the greatest mathematical discovery of the present age. Now, that problem was either predicated by us, or by some other person, who has thereby made the greatest of all modern discoveries in mathematical astronomy. We did not make it for we know knothing of mathematics whatever; therefore, it was made by the only person to whom it can rationally be ascribed, namely, Herschel the astronomer, its only avowed and undeniable author."— Editor of the Sun.
- ↑
"As when the Moon,[2] refulgent lamp of night
O'er heav'n's clear azure spreads her sacred light,
When not a breath disturbs the deep serene,
And not a cloud o'ercasts the solemn scene;
Around her throne the vivid planets roll,
And stars unnumber'd gild the glowing pole,
O'er the dark trees a yellower verdure sled,
And tip with silver ev'ry mountain's head;
Then shine the vales, the rocks in prospect rise,
A flood of glory bursts from all the skies."Homer.The earth is accompanied by a Moon or satellite, whose distance is 237,000 miles and diameter 2,160. Her surface is composed of hill and dale, of rocks and mountains, nearly two miles high, and of circular cavities, sometimes five miles in depth and forty in diameter. She possesses neither rivers, nor lakes, nor seas, and we can. not discover with the telescope any traces of living beings, or any monuments of their hands. Viewing the earth as we now do, as the third planet in order from the gun, can we doubt that it is a globe like the real, poised in ether like them, and, like them, moving round the central luminary?
- ↑ As when the moon, &c. This comparison to inferior to none in Homer. It is the most beautiful night-piece that can be found in poetry. He presents you with a prospect of the heavens, the wear, and the earth; the stars shine; the air is serene, the world enlighten'd, and the moon mounted in glory.
- ↑ For an account of the singular views which the ancients had entertained on this subject, see " The Theology of the Phoenicians," by Sanchoniatho, who flourished about the time of the Trojan war. Published in a collection of Ancient Fragments, New York. 1835.