Some of them
were as straight as if laid out with a line, others were curved a little
here and there, though still maintaining the strict parallelism of their
sides. These crossed each other; those entered craters and came out at
the other side. Here, they furrowed annular plateaus, such as
_Posidonius_ or _Petavius_. There, they wrinkled whole seas, for
instance, _Mare Serenitatis_.
These curious peculiarities of the lunar surface had interested the
astronomic mind to a very high degree at their first discovery, and have
proved to be very perplexing problems ever since. The first observers do
not seem to have noticed them. Neither Hevelius, nor Cassini, nor La
Hire, nor Herschel, makes a single remark regarding their nature.
It was Schroeter, in 1789, who called the attention of scientists to
them for the first time. He had only 11 to show, but Lohrmann soon
recorded 75 more. Pastorff, Gruithuysen, and particularly Beer and
Maedler were still more successful, but Julius Schmidt, the famous
astronomer of Athens, has raised their number up to 425, and has even
published their names in a catalogue. But counting them is one thing,
determining their nature is another.
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