ring mountains, mounts like those of the craters of earthly
volcanoes, surrounded immediately by vast and profound circular pits,
hollowed under the general surface, these again being surrounded by a
circular wall of mountain, rising far above the central one, and in
the inside of which are terraces about the same height as the inner
eminence. The well-known bright spot in the south-east quarter,
called by astronomers Tycho, and which can be readily distinguished
by the naked eye, is one of these ring-mountains. There is one of
200 miles in diameter, with a pit 22,000 feet deep; that is, twice
the height of AEtna. It is remarkable, that the maps given by
Humboldt of a volcanic district in South America, and one
illustrative of the formerly volcanic district of Auvergne, in
France, present features strikingly like many parts of the moon's
surface, as seen through a good glass.

These characteristics of the moon forbid the idea that it can be at
present a theatre of life like the earth, and almost seem to declare
that it never can become so. But we must not rashly draw any such
conclusions. The moon may be only in an earlier stage of the
progress through which the earth has already gone. The elements
which seem wanting may be only in combinations different in those
which exist here, and may yet be developed as we here find them.
Seas may yet fill the profound hollows of the surface; an atmosphere
may spread over the whole. Should these events take place,
meteorological phenomena, and all the phenomena of organic life, will
commence, and the moon, like the earth, will become a green and
inhabited world.

It is unavoidably held as a strong proof in favour of any hypothesis,
when all the relative phenomena are in harmony with it. This is