THE MYSTERY OF MARS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 61, 29 October 1907, Page 4

THE MYSTERY OF MARS.

Romances, says a professor, have found a fertile field for their imagination in dealing with the hypothetical inhabitants of Mars. The enquiry into the habitability of other worlds has a singular fascination for many minds. We know that the earth would look from a distance very like some of the other planets which girdle the sun, and that countless pther Buns in the unfathomable void of space are attended by similar satellites. So far as the solar system is concerned, it is generally agreed that Mars is the only planet which is likely to contain any beings akin to humanity. Mercury and Venus are exposed to such intense solar heat that they do not seem fit for the abode of life as we know it. The minor planets are too small to support existence, since they cannot possibly have any atmosphere, while Jupiter and the other planets are still almost certainly in a semi-fluid stage. Astronomers at large are more and more inclined to accept as valid the theories which they were inclined to scoot, when first put forward, relative to the epoch-making discovery of the Martian canals by Schiaparelli at the | opposition of 1887. The suggestion that the extraordinary phenomena were the consequence of some fallacy of observation—a mere optical illusion —has been definitely abandoned since, within the last year or two, a record of the more important canals has been obtained on photographic plates, which are not subject to illusions of this nature when proper precautions are taken, and the substantive existence of the canals | is now universally admitted. The surface of Mars, when studied with an adequate telescope power in a pure atmosphere, is seen to be covered with a network of faint lines, several hundred in number, which mostly run perfectly straight for hundreds of thousands of miles. These markings were discovered by Schiaparelli in 1877, when he gave them tbe name of "canali," or channels. The appearance of these canals varies according to the Martian season, and have a reference to the ice caps at the poles. It has been conclusively shown that when all these changes are considered together, there is no escape from the conclusion that the canals in some way represent a great system of irrigation, by which tbe scanty water supply of Mars is carried from the great snowfalls which absorb it in winter over the whole surface of the planet upon its successful progress. We cannot even indicate the numerous arguments which are derived from numerous obesrvations to. support this conclusion, but it is enough to say that no other theory of the seasonal changes in the appearance of Mars has been suggested which has any pretension to explain the observed facts, whereas this theory fits them all and accounts for them in a perfectly satisfactory manner. It is practically out of the question that this course of events, repeated Martian year after Martian year with unfailing regularity, could be purely natural or fortunitons. The inevitable conclusion is that we are actually watching the intelligent struggle of an ancient population against the hard conditions of life in a dying planet—for Mars has travelled much farther than the earth on that evolutionary path which has already made a dead world of the moon. Mr T/Owell reminds us that the Martians, to achieve this world-wide system of irrigation, must have reached Golden Age which all the best thinkers of I the earth desiderate.