A great deal of attention is, and has been, paid by certain astronomers to the moon, in the hope of finding out if any changes are actually in progress at present upon her surface. Sir William Herschel, indeed, once thought that he saw a lunar volcano in eruption, but this proved to be merely the effect of the sunlight striking the top of the crater Aristarchus, while the region around it was still in shadow--sunrise upon Aristarchus, in fact! No change of any real importance has, however, been noted, although it is suspected that some minor alterations have from time to time taken place. For instance, slight variations of tint have been noticed in certain areas of the lunar surface. Professor W.H. Pickering puts forward the conjecture that these may be caused by the growth and decay of some low form of vegetation, brought into existence by vapours of water, or carbonic acid gas, making their way out from the interior through cracks near at hand. Again, during the last hundred years one small crater known as Linné (Linnæus), situated in the Mare Serenitatis (Sea of Serenity), has appeared to undergo slight changes, and is even said to have been invisible for a while (see Plate X., p. 200). It is, however, believed that the changes in question may be due to the varying angles at which the sunlight falls upon the crater; for it is an understood fact that the irregularities of the moon's motion give us views of her surface which always differ slightly. The suggestion has more than once been put forward that the surface of the moon is covered with a thick layer of ice. This is generally considered improbable, and consequently the idea has received very little support. It first originated with the late Mr. S.E. Peal, an English observer of the moon, and has recently been resuscitated by the German observer, Herr Fauth. The most unfavourable time for telescopic study of the moon is when she is full. The sunlight is then falling directly upon her visible hemisphere, and so the mountains cast no shadows. We thus do not get that impression of hill and hollow which is so very noticeable in the other phases. The first map of the moon was constructed by Galileo. Tobias Mayer published another in 1775; while during the nineteenth century greatly improved ones were made by Beer and Mädler, Schmidt, Neison and others. In 1903, Professor W.H. Pickering brought out a complete photographic lunar atlas; and a similar publication has recently appeared, the work of MM. Loewy and Puiseux of the Observatory of Paris. The so-called "seas" of the moon are, as we have seen, merely dark areas, and there appears to be no proof that they were ever occupied by any liquid. They are for the most part found in the _northern_ portion of the moon; a striking contrast to our seas and oceans, which take up so much of the _southern_ hemisphere of the earth.