Fig. 564.—The walled-plain Plato.
The Chinese have an idea that a rabbit exists in the moon, and is the cause of the shadows we see. The Buddhists think a holy hare is up there. In the Pacific Islands there is a belief of a woman in the moon; she was sent there because she wished her child to have a bit of it to eat; and Mr. Buchanan has versified the old Scandinavian myth about the two children kidnapped by the moon as they returned from a well with a bucket of water slung upon a pole. The Jews placed Jacob in the moon, and the Italians say that Cain inhabits the luminary with a dog and a thorn bush. In the Inferno of Dante this is referred to, and we know that in A Midsummer Night’s Dream we have the moon coming out to shine upon the loves of Pyramus and Thisbe with the dog and the thorn-bush; and in the Tempest the same idea is mentioned by Caliban. Readers of Longfellow will recall the lines how “the good Nokomis answered” Hiawatha, who asked about the moon—
“Once a warrior, very angry,
Seized his grandmother, and threw her
Up into the sky at midnight.
Right against the moon he threw her,
‘Tis her body that you see there.”
But modern scientific research has exploded all these charming old myths, and laid bare the facts for us. We must now resume.
Fig. 565.—Map of Moon showing [principal formations].