Page:The sidereal messenger of Galileo Galilei.pdf/48

 appearance is owing to real dissimilarity of parts, and not to unevennesses only in their configuration, changing in different ways the shadows of the same parts according to the variations of their illumination by the Sun, which really happens in the case of the other smaller spots occupying the brighter portion of the Moon, for day by day they change, increase, decrease, or disappear, inasmuch as they derive their origin only from the shadows of prominences.

But here I feel that some people may be troubled with grave doubt, and perhaps seized with a difficulty so serious as to compel them to feel uncertain about the conclusion just explained and supported by so many phenomena. For if that part of the Moon's surface which reflects the Sun's rays most brightly is full of sinuosities, protuberances, and cavities innumerable, why, when the Moon is increasing, does the outer edge which looks toward the west, when the Moon is waning, the other half-circumference towards the east, and at full-moon the whole circle, appear not uneven, rugged, and irregular, but perfectly round and circular, as sharply defined as if marked out with a pair of compasses, and without the indentations of any protuberances or cavities? And most remarkably so, because the whole unbroken edge belongs to that part of the Moon's surface which possesses the property of