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This, however, is an exact description of what Barbicane and his companions saw at this height. Large patches of different colors appeared on the disc. Selenographers are not agreed upon the nature of these colors. There are several, and rather vividly marked.
On some occasions it appeared perfectly straight, at others very irregular; but, what is very remarkable, although two such accurate observers as Lohrmann and Madler frequently scrutinised the region, neither of them saw a trace of this object; and but for its rediscovery by Schmidt in 1862, its existence would certainly have been ignored by selenographers as a mere figment of Gruithuisen's too lively imagination.
It will be noticed that this hemisphere is thirteen and a-half times smaller than the terrestrial hemisphere. And yet upon it selenographers have already counted 50,000 craters. It is a rugged surface worthy of the unpoetical qualification of "green cheese" which the English have given it. When Barbicane pronounced this disobliging name Michel Ardan gave a bound.
Large patches of different colours appeared on the disc. Selenographers do not agree about their nature. They are quite distinct from each other.
Shortly afterwards, M. Gaudibert, one of our most experienced selenographers, who has discovered many hitherto unrecorded clefts, having seen my drawing, searched for this object, and, though the night was far from favourable, had distinct though brief glimpses of it with the moderate magnifying power of 100.
Neison and some other selenographers place in a distinct class certain of the smaller ring-plains which usually have a steeper outer slope, and are supposed to present clearer indications of a volcanic origin than the ring-plains, terming them "Crater-plains."
"Not at all!" cried the Frenchman, still true to his colors; "no subsidence there! A comet simply came too close and left its mark as it flew past." "Fanciful exclamations, dear friends," observed Barbican; "but I'm not surprised at your excitement. Yonder is the famous Valley of the Alps, a standing enigma to all selenographers. How it could have been formed, no one can tell.
Though nothing resembling sheets of water, either of small or large extent, have ever been detected on the surface, the superficial resemblance, in small telescopes, of the large grey tracts to the appearance which we may suppose our terrestrial lakes and oceans would present to an observer on the moon, naturally induced the early selenographers to term them Maria, or "seas" a convenient name, which is still maintained, without, however, implying that these areas, as we now see them, are, or ever were, covered with water.
Varieties of color, in the first place, appeared here and there upon the disc. Selenographers are not quite agreed as to the nature of these colors. Not that such colors are without variety or too faint to be easily distinguished.
Hevelius singularly reduced these figures, which Riccioli, on the contrary, doubled. All these measures were exaggerated. Herschel, with his more perfect instruments, approached nearer the hypsometric truth. But it must be finally sought in the accounts of modern observers. Messrs. Boeer and Moedler, the most perfect selenographers in the whole world, have measured 1,095 lunar mountains.
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