BULLIALDUS AND THE _Mare Nubium_. ] “Bullialdus verily frightens me!” exclaimed my friend. “What an unearthly look it has! The longer I regard it the stronger becomes the indescribable impression that it produces. I begin to understand now what you meant when you promised to find a history in the moon. Truly there never can have been such another history. I almost feel that I do not care whether the moon ever had inhabitants or not. Its own story is more fascinating than that of any puny race of beings, passing their ephemeral lives upon its wonderful surface, could possibly be.” “I am glad,” I replied, “that you have begun to enter into the spirit of those who long and carefully study the earth’s satellite. You see now, that it is not necessary to the astronomer to find evidences either of former or of present life upon the moon in order to stimulate his zeal. For him, as you have yourself intimated, the relics of its past history, which this little world in the sky exhibits so abundantly, are of higher interest than any story of human empire, for they have an incomparably vaster theme. But to lighten our labor a little, let me once more refer to the ‘dark woman,’ whose features, like the outlines of a constellation, serve for points of reference. I began by remarking that Bullialdus seems to be placed just over her ear. Observe now that, taken together with its immediate surroundings, the great crater ring forms a kind of barbaric ear-ornament of most extraordinary form and richness of detail. The line of hills east of Bullialdus, of which I spoke a few minutes ago, connects the ring with a tumbled mass of mountains on the border of the _Mare Humorum_. These mountains run northward, or downward in the picture, for a distance of perhaps 150 miles, and then turn abruptly westward for a like distance; after which, in the form of a broken chain, constituting the eastern walls of a row of half-submerged ring plains, they change direction once more and run southward in the _Mare Nubium_. The whole system bears some resemblance to a gigantic buckle.” “What is that curious object below Bullialdus which resembles an old-fashioned gold earring?”