The lunar landscape by night needs little description: it would be lit by the earth-moon sufficiently to allow salient features, even at a distance, to be easily made out, for its moon (_i.e._ the earth) has thirteen times the light-reflecting area that our’s has. But the night illumination will change in intensity, since the earth-moon varies from half-full to full, and again to half-full, between sunset and the next sunrise. The direction of the light, and hence the positions of the shadows, will scarcely alter on account of the apparent fixity of the earth in the lunar sky. A slight degree of warmth might possibly be felt with the reflected earth-light; but it would be insufficient to mollify the intensity of the prevailing cold. The heat accumulated by the ground during the three hundred hours’ sunshine radiates rapidly into space, there being no atmospheric coat to retain it, and a cooling process ensues that goes on till, all warmth having rapidly departed, the previously parched soil assumes a temperature approaching that of celestial space itself, and which has been, as we have stated, estimated at about 200° below the Fahrenheit zero. If moisture existed upon the moon, its night-side would be bound in a grip of frost to which our Arctic regions would be comparatively tropical. But since there is no water, the aspect of the lunar scenery remains unmodified by effects of changing temperature. Such, then, are the most prominent effects that would manifest themselves to the visual and other senses of a being transported to the moon. The picture is not on the whole a pleasant one, but it is instructive; and our rendering of it, imperfect though it be, may serve to suggest other inferences that cannot but add to the interest which always attaches to the contemplation of natural scenes and phenomena from points of view different from those which we ordinarily occupy. [Illustration: PLATE XXIII. GROUP of LUNAR MOUNTAINS. ideal lunar landscape.] CHAPTER XIV. THE MOON AS A SATELLITE: ITS RELATION TO THE EARTH AND MAN. Apart from the recondite functions of the moon considered as one of the interdependent members of the solar family, into which it would be beyond our purpose to inquire, there are certain means by which it subserves human interests and ministers to the wants of civilized man to which we deem it desirable to call attention, especially as some of them are not so self-apparent as to have attracted popular attention.