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To their practical, common sense vision Mare Nubium, the Cloudy Sea, was an immense depression of the surface, sprinkled here and there with a few circular mountains. Covering a great portion of that part of the southern hemisphere which lies east of the centre, it occupied a space of about 270 thousand square miles, its central point lying in 15° south latitude and 20° east longitude.
A fine mountain range, the Percy Mountains, is connected with the E. flank of Gassendi, extending in a S.E. direction towards Mersenius, and defining the N.E. side of the Mare Humorum. BULLIALDUS. A noble object, 38 miles in diameter, forming with its surroundings by far the most notable formation on the surface of the Mare Nubium, and one of the most characteristic ring-plains on the moon.
There is a deep crater with a bright rim on its S.W. wall, and E. of this a notable gap. There is also a wide opening on the N. The E. wall is of the linear type. A cleft crosses the interior. GUERIKE. The most southerly member of a remarkable group of partially destroyed walled-plains, standing in an isolated position in the Mare Nubium.
This announcement alone was enough to take one's breath away, but when the green marble shores of the Mare Nubium; the mountains shaped like pyramids, and of the purest and most dazzling crystalized, wine-colored amethyst, dotting green valleys skirted by "round-breasted hills;" summits of the purest vermilion fringed with arching cascades and buttresses of white marble glistening in the sun when these began to be revealed, the delight of our Luna-tics knew no bounds and the whole town went moon-mad!
One of these flashes extended as far as Neander on the 40th meridian; another, curving around so as to furrow the Mare Nectaris, came to an end on the chain of the Pyrenees, after a course of perhaps a little more than seven hundred miles. On the east, some of them barred with luminous network the Mare Nubium and even the Mare Humorum.
South of Oceanus Procellarum and separated from Mare Nubium by a goodly number of ring mountains, lies the little basin of Mare Humorum, the Sea of Humors, containing only about 66 thousand square miles, its central point having a latitude of 25° south and a longitude of 40° east.
After Tycho, which is situated in the southern hemisphere, Copernicus forms the most important radiating mountain in the lunar disc. It looms up, single and isolated, like a gigantic light-house, on the peninsula separating Mare Nubium from Oceanus Procellarum on one side and from Mare Imbrium on the other; thus illuminating with its splendid radiation three "Seas" at a time.
Mare Nubium, though not very clearly outlined on the maps, is easily recognized by lying directly east of the regions about the centre. It would appear as if this vast plain were sprinkled with immense lava blocks shot forth from the great volcanoes on the right, Ptolemaeus, Alphonse, Alpetragius and Arzachel.
PITATUS. This remarkable object, 58 miles in diameter, with Hesiodus, its companion on the E., situated at the extreme S. end of the Mare Nubium, afford good examples of a class of formations which exhibit undoubted signs of partial destruction, from some unknown cause, on that side of them which faces the Mare.
Deceived, perhaps, by the vague titles, Mare Nubium, Mare Tranquillitatis, Mare Faecunditatis, etc., given to the dark spots by former astronomers, Mr. L. has entered into details regarding oceans and other large bodies of water in the moon; whereas there is no astronomical point more positively ascertained than that no such bodies exist there.
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