Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 February 1884 — What the Moon’s Face Tells. [ARTICLE]

What the Moon’s Face Tells.

’ The meon’S face, says prof. Procter, tells’ of a rem’ote youtli—a time of fiery L ' activity; "vVlieii volcanic action, even more effective (though not pfobably more energetic) than any which has ever taken place on this globe, upheaved the moon’s ’crust. But so soon as we carefully the features of the moon’s "surface we see that there must have beeh ’ three distinct eras of vulcanian activity. Look at the multitudinous craters, for example, around the metropolitan crater of Tycho. They tell us of century after century of volcanic disturbance—but they tell us more. They mark a surface which varies in texture, and, therefore, in light-reflecting power in such a way as to show that the yariations were produced long before the volcanic action began by which the craters were formed. For the variations of texture are such as to mark a series of streaks —some of them 2,000 or 3,000 miles in length, and many miles in breadth, extending radially from Tycho. Craters lie indifferently on these brighter' streaks and on the intervening darker spaces, and some craters can be seen which lie right across a bright streak with parts of their ring on the darker regions on both sides of the streak. This proves that the craters were formed long after the great streaks. "\yhen the streaked surface wUs formed, it must have been tolerably smooth; for we see the streaks best under a full illumination, and there is no sign of any difference of elevation between them and the darker ground all around; they are neither long ridges nor long valleys, but mere surface markings. Yet must they have been formed by mighty vulcanian disturbance, such, indeed, as we may be certain went on at an early stage of the moon’s history, to which these radiating streaks must be referred. It seems clear that, as Nasmith has illustrated by experiment, they belong to the stage of the moon’s history when her still hot and plastic crust parted with its heat more rapidly than the nucleus of the planet, and so, contracting more quickly, was Tent by the resistance of the internal matter, which, still hot and molten, flowed into the rents, and spreading, formed the long, broad streaks of brighter surface.