Shining large and fair in the heavens, the moon seems, as a queen, to lead forth the hosts of the stars, but if we watch its course each of the twenty-seven days which it requires for its journey around the earth, we shall see that it continually falls behind the progress of the shining hosts, and possesses a motion entirely independent of them. The moon, like the earth, shines by the reflected light of the sun, and this causes the lunar or moon phases. Thus sometimes we see the full moon; then by slowly lessening degrees, which we call waning, we see the half, and the quarter, and the little crescent, or octant. Then we lose sight of the moon, and again it becomes visible as a slim crescent, the hornèd moon it is called, and so waxes to the full. In the circle which the moon describes about our earth, the moon passes between us and the sun once in about thirty days, and so presents us a dark side, which is called the new moon. In fifteen days more it is on the opposite side of the earth from the sun, and shows us its entire disk illuminated, which we call full moon; passing still about us, in fifteen days after full moon, having changed from full to gibbous, and to the third quarter, half, and second quarter, once more we are presented with the slim octant of the hornèd moon. Generally the moon in its orbit passes a little above or below the disk of the sun, but sometimes it moves exactly across the face of the sun, and so occasions an eclipse of the sun. Again, sometimes the moon, as it passes behind the earth, comes within the cone of shadow cast by the earth, and so an eclipse of the moon, either total or partial, is caused. There are many nights when we say “there is no moon.” We should not understand by this that the moon is not in the sky; the simple fact is that in the progression of its rising, the moon has come to a time when she moves during the day through the part of the heavens that is visible to us. So sometimes toward sunset, we see the moon high in the sky, and during part of the day, when the nights are moonless, we see the moon when not obscured by the greater light of the sun. In all these various changes of its life, if we study the moon with telescopes, we shall find it to be a globe, opaque, lit up by the sun, having mountains and valleys on its surface. Those dark lines and spots which with the naked eye we see on the full moon, are ranges of volcanic mountains. The surface of the moon has been mapped out by astronomers, who have given names to the various eminences and depressions, and from a study of the moon much has been learned of planets in general. For, while the moon is so small a body and has its orbit around the earth, which is its centre of attraction, it is not to be considered as a mere satellite, but is to be respectfully ranked among the planets.