is so in the Seas of Serenity and
Humours. Barbicane likewise remarked the wide craters with no interior
cones, which are of a bluish colour, analogous to that of fresh-polished
sheets of steel. These colours really belonged to the lunar disc, and
did not result, as certain astronomers think, either from some
imperfection in the object-glasses of the telescopes or the
interposition of the terrestrial atmosphere. Barbicane had no longer any
doubt about it. He was looking at it through the void, and could not
commit any optical error. He considered that the existence of this
different colouring was proved to science. Now were the green shades
owing to tropical vegetation, kept up by a low and dense atmosphere? He
could not yet be certain.

Farther on he noticed a reddish tinge, quite sufficiently distinct. A
similar colour had already been observed upon the bottom of an isolated
inclosure, known under the name of the Lichtenberg Amphitheatre, which
is situated near the Hercynian Mountains, on the border of the moon. But
he could not make out its nature.

He was not more fortunate about another peculiarity of the disc, for he
could not find out its cause. The peculiarity was the following one:--

Michel Ardan was watching near the president when he remarked some long
white lines brilliantly lighted up by the direct rays of the sun. It was
a succession of luminous furrows, very different from the radiation that
Copernicus had presented. They ran in parallel lines.

Michel, with his usual readiness, exclaimed--

"Why, there are cultivated fields!"

"Cultivated fields!" repeated Nicholl, shrugging his shoulders.

"Ploughed fields, at all events," replied Michel Ardan. "But what
ploughmen these Selenites must be, and what gigantic oxen they must
harness to their ploughs, to make such furrows!"

"They are not furrows, they are crevices!"

"Crevices let them be," answered Michel with docility. "Only what do you
mean by crevices in the world of science?" Barbicane soon told his
companions all he knew about lunar crevices. He knew that they were
furrows observed upon all the non-mountainous parts of the lunar disc;
that these furrows, generally isolated, were from four to five leagues
only; that their width varies from 1,000 to 1,500 metres, and their
edges are rigorously parallel. But he knew nothing more about their
formation or their nature.

Barbicane watched these furrows through his telescope very attentively.
H