it remain on any meridian. But it was very nearly South
and North,--an enormous motion in declination with a very
slight RETROGRADE motion in Right Ascension. At five
thousand miles the MOON showed as large as a circle two
miles and a third in diameter would have shown on old
Thornbush, as we always called her older sister. We
longed for an eclipse of Thornbush by B. M., but no such
lucky chance is on the cards in any place accessible to
us for many years. Of course, with a MOON so near us the
terrestrial parallax is enormous.

Now, you know, dear reader, that the gigantic
reflector of Lord Rosse, and the exquisite fifteen-
inch refractors of the modern observatories, eliminate
from the chaotic rubbish-heap of the surface of old
Thornbush much smaller objects than such a circle as I
have named. If you have read Mr. Locke's amusing Moon
Hoax as often as I have, you have those details fresh in
your memory. As John Farrar taught us when all this
began,--and as I have said already,--if there were a
State House in Thornbush two hundred feet long, the first
Herschel would have seen it. His magnifying power was
6450; that would have brought this deaf and dumb State
House within some forty miles. Go up on Mt. Washington
and see white sails eighty miles away, beyond Portland,
with your naked eye, and you will find how well he would
have seen that State House with his reflector. Lord
Rosse's statement is, that with his reflector he can see
objects on old Thornbush two hundred and fifty-two feet
long. If he can do that he can see on our B. M. objects