This extraordinary brilliancy would be intelligible were it permissible to suppose that we see nothing of the planet but a dense canopy of clouds. But the hypothesis is discountenanced by the Flagstaff observations, and is irreconcilable with the visibility of mountainous elevations, and permanent surface-markings. To Mr. Lowell these were so distinct and unchanging as to furnish data for a chart of the Cytherean globe, and the peculiar arrangement of divergent shading exhibited in it cannot off-hand be set down as unreal, in view of Perrotin's earlier discernment of analogous linear traces. Gruithuisen's "snow-caps,"[876] however--it is safe to say--do not exist as such; although shining regions near the poles form a well-attested trait of the strange Cytherean landscape. The "secondary," or "ashen light," of Venus was first noticed by Riccioli in 1643; it was seen by Derham about 1715, by Kirch in 1721, by Schröter and Harding in 1806;[877] and the reality of the appearance has since been authenticated by numerous and trustworthy observations. It is precisely similar to that of the "old moon in the new moon's arms"; and Zenger, who witnessed it with unusual distinctness, January 8, 1883,[878] supposes it due to the same cause--namely, to the faint gleam of reflected earth-light from the night-side of the planet. When we remember, however, that "full earth-light" on Venus, at its nearest, has little more than 1/12000 its intensity on the moon, we see at once that the explanation is inadequate. Nor can Professor Safarik's,[879] by phosphorescence of the warm and teeming oceans with which Zöllner[880] regarded the globe of Venus as mainly covered, be seriously entertained. Vogel's suggestion is more plausible. He and O. Lohse, at Bothkamp, November 3 to 11, 1871, saw the dark hemisphere _partially_ illuminated by secondary light, extending 30° from the terminator, and thought the effect might be produced by a very extensive twilight.[881] Others have had recourse to the analogy of our auroræ, and J. Lamp suggested that the grayish gleam, visible to him at Bothkamp, October 21 and 26, 1887,[882] might be an accompaniment of electrical processes connected with the planet's meteorology. Whatever the origin of the phenomenon, it may serve, on a night-enwrapt hemisphere, to dissipate some of the thick darkness otherwise encroached upon only by "the pale light of stars."