Page:The Discovery of a World in the Moone, 1638.djvu/78

Rh 1. Why does shee not alwaies appeare in the full? since the light is dispersed through all her body?

2. How can the interposition of her body so darken the Sun, or cause such great eclipses as have turned day into night, that have discovered the stars, and frighted the birds with such a sudden darknesse, that they fell downe upon the earth, as it is related in divers Histories? And therefore Herodotus telling of an Eclipse which fell in Xerxes time, describes it thus: The Sunne leaving his wonted seate in the heavens, vanished away: all which argues such a great darknesse, as could not have beene, if her body had beene perspicuous. Yet some there are who interpret all these relations to bee hyperbolicall expressions, and the noble Tycho thinkes it naturally impossible, that any eclipse should cause such darknesse,  Rh