“Surely it does. Why not?” I replied, smiling. “You must remember that the earth is simply a huge moon to our imagined inhabitants of the lunar world. Our globe sends to the moon about fourteen times as much reflected sunlight as the moon sends to the earth. The consequence is than an earthlit night on the moon is far more brilliant than a moonlit night on the earth.” “Then why do we not always see the moon shining with light from the earth?” “It is a question of contrast. You cannot see a faint light in the immediate presence of an overpoweringly brighter light. The part of the moon that the sun illuminates is in the full glare of day, and this is so much more brilliant than the reflected earthlight that that portion of the moon which enjoys only the latter is not visible to us, except for a few days after New Moon, when the amount of light from the crescent is not yet great enough to dazzle our eyes and hide the rest from sight. I should advise you when the next New Moon occurs—you can find the date in any almanac—to look at it in the western sky. You will see in addition to the bright crescent the full round orb of the moon, shining faintly, with a dull, rather copperish, tint, and you will find it interesting, then, to remember that that light is reflected from our earth. “And now,” I continued, “let us examine our photograph more closely. There is one remark that I had expected which you have not made; it concerns the position of the crescent. You observe that it is bowed toward the left. If you saw it with the naked eye in the sky it would be bowed toward the right, or toward the place of sunset. The reason is that the photograph presents the moon as seen with a telescope, which reverses objects, turning them top for bottom. In this picture, and in all the others that we shall examine, the southern part of the moon is at the top and the northern part at the bottom, the western part at the left and the eastern part at the right. The first thing that you probably notice in the photograph is a conspicuous oval plain, somewhat below the center of the crescent.” “Yes, and I see clearly why you call it a plain, for it is perfectly flat and smooth.” “Not quite so flat and smooth as you suppose. This object is one of the most celebrated on the moon. It is the so-called _Mare Crisium_, or Sea of Crises, as we may translate the name given to it by the astronomers of a couple of centuries ago, many of whom knew more Latin than science. Owing to its apparent smoothness of surface, as well as to its form and general aspect, they took it for a great lake or sea.” “To tell you the truth,” said my friend, “if I were an astronomer and had discovered this curious place on the moon, I should certainly believe just what your Latin-loving predecessors believed, but I doubt if I should have been capable of inventing so singular a name for it.”