The first was with a very soft and well temper’d mixture of Tobacco-pipe clay and Water, into which, if I let fall any heavy body, as a Bullet, it would throw up the mixture round the place, which for a while would make a representation, not unlike these of the Moon; but considering the state and condition of the Moon, there seems not any probability to imagine, that it should proceed from any cause analogus to this; for it would be difficult to imagine whence those bodies should come; and next, how the substance of the Moon should be so soft; but if a Bubble be blown under the surface of it, and suffer’d to rise, and break; or if a Bullet, or other body, sunk in it, be pull’d out from it, these departing bodies leave an impression on the surface of the mixture, exactly like these of the Moon, save that these also quickly subside and vanish.  But the second, and most notable, representation was, what I observ’d in a pot of boyling Alabaster, for there that powder being by the eruption of vapours reduc’d to a kind of fluid consistence, if, whil’st it boyls, it be gently remov’d besides the fire, the Alabaster presently ceasing to boyl, the whole surface, especially that where some of the last Bubbles have risen, will appear all over covered with small pits, exactly shap’d like these of the Moon, and by holding a lighted Candle in a large dark Room, in divers positions to this surface, you may exactly represent all the Phaenomena of these pits in the Moon, according as they are more or less inlightned by the Sun.

And that there may have been in the Moon some such motion as this, which may have made these pits, will seem the more probable, if we suppose it like our Earth, for the Earthquakes here with us seem to proceed from some such cause, as the boyling of the pot of Alabaster, there seeming to be generated in the Earth from some subterraneous fires, or heat, great quantities of vapours, that is, of expanded aerial substances, which not presently finding a passage through the ambient parts of the Earth, do, as they are increased by the supplying and generating principles, and thereby (having not sufficient room to expand themselves) extreamly condens’d, at last overpower, with their elastick properties, the resistence of the incompassing Earth, and lifting it up, or cleaving it, and so shattering of the parts of the Earth above it, do at length, where they find the parts of the Earth above them more loose, make their way upwards, and carrying a great part of the Earth before them, not only raise a small brim round about the place, out of which they break, but for the most part considerable high Hills and Mountains, and when they break from under the Sea, divers times, mountainous Islands; this seems confirm’d by the Vulcans in several places of the Earth, the mouths of which, for the most part, are incompassed with a Hill of a considerable height, and the tops of those Hills, or Mountains, are usually shap’d very much like these pits, or dishes,