Page:A discovery that the moon has a vast population of human beings.djvu/16

 and to confute those of others. The existence of volcanoes discovered by his father and by Schroeter of Berlin, and the changes observed by the latter in the volcano in the Mare Crisium or Lucid Lake, were corroborated and illustrated, as was also the prevalence of far more extensive volcanic phenomena. The disproportionate height attributed to the lunar mountains was corrected from careful admeasurement; whilst the celebrated conical hills, encircling valleys of vast diameter, and surrounding the lofty central hills, were distinctly perceived. The formation which Professor Frauenhofer unchari. tably conjectured to be a lunar fortification, he ascertained to be a tabular buttress of a remarkably pyramidical mountain; lines which had been whimsically pronounced roads and canals, he found to be keen ridges of singularly regular rows of hills; and that which Schroeter imagined to be a great city in the neighborhood of Marius, he determined to be a valley of disjointed rocks scattered in fragments, which averaged at least a thousand yards in diameter. Thus the general geography of the planet, in its grand outlines of cape, continent, mountain, ocean, and island, was surveyed with greater particularity and accuracy than by any previous observer; and the striking dissimilarity of many of its local features to any existing on our own globe, was clearly demonstrated. The best enlarged maps of that luminary which have been published were constructed from this survey; and neither the astronomer nor the public ventured to hope for any great accession to their developments. The utmost power of the largest telescope in the world had been exerted in a new and felicitous manner to obtain them, and there was no reasonable expectation that a larger one would ever be constructed, or that it could be advantageously used if it were. A law of nature, and the finitude of human skill, seemed united in inflexible opposition to any further improvement in telescopic science, as applicable to the known planets and satellites of the solar system. For unless the sun could be prevailed upon to extend a more liberal allowance of light to these bodies, and they be induced to transfer it, for the generous gratification of our curiosity, what adequate substitute could be obtained? Telescopes do not create light, they can-