The story of the sun, moon, and stars . climate whichthe moon has to endure. The general belief now in-clines to the idea that the moon-volcanoes are extinct,though no doubt there was in the past great volcanicactivity there. A description has been given earlier of the rain ofmeteorites constantly falling to our earth, and onlyprevented by the atmosphere from becoming the moon has no such protecting atmosphere, andthe amount of cannonading which she has to enduremust be by no means small. Perhaps in past times,when her slowly-cooling crust was yet soft, these ce-lestial missiles sh
The story of the sun, moon, and stars . climate whichthe moon has to endure. The general belief now in-clines to the idea that the moon-volcanoes are extinct,though no doubt there was in the past great volcanicactivity there. A description has been given earlier of the rain ofmeteorites constantly falling to our earth, and onlyprevented by the atmosphere from becoming the moon has no such protecting atmosphere, andthe amount of cannonading which she has to enduremust be by no means small. Perhaps in past times,when her slowly-cooling crust was yet soft, these ce-lestial missiles showering upon her may have occa-sionally made deep round holes in her surface. 172 STORY OF THE SUN, MOON, AND STARS. This is another guess, which time may prove to betrue. Guesses at possible explanations of mysteriesdo no harm, so long as we do not accept them fortruth without ample reason. The origin of the lunar craters must be referredto some ancient epoch in the moons history. Howancient that epoch is we have no means of knowing;. I,UNAR ERUPTION—BRISK ACTION. but in all probability the antiquity of the lunar cratersis enormously great. At the time when the moonwas sufficiently heated to have these vast volcaniceruptions, of which the mighty craters are the sur-vivals, the earth must have been ver} much hotterthan it is at present. It is not, indeed, at all unrea-sonable to believe that when the moon was hot enoughfor its volcanoes to be active, the earth was so hot thatlife was impossible on its surface. This supposition YET MORE ABOUT THE MOON. 173 would point to an antiquity for the moons craters fartoo great to be estimated by the centuries and thethousands of years which are adequate for the lapseof time as recognized by the history of human seems not unlikely that millions of years may haveelapsed since the mighty craters of Plato or of Coper-nicus consolidated into their present form.
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