LIFE IN MARS.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1797, 2 October 1888, Page 4

LIFE IN MARS.

There are continents, seas, islands, shores, peninsulas, capes, gulfs, clouds, rains, inundations, snows, winters and summers, springs and autumns, days and nights—all are there, exactly as with us. The years are longer, consisting of 687 day's, but the intensity of the seasons is absolutely the same as ours, for the inclination of its axis is the same. Ihe days are also a trifle longer, since the diurnal rotation of Mars takes 24 hours 37 minutes and 23 seconds, but the difference is not great.—and, please note, ail this is known with precision, The diurnal rotation, for instance, is determined within the tenth of a second. When we behold the polar snows on the Mars melting in spring, the sharplycut continents, the mediterranean seas with their deeply-indented bays —the whole varied and suggestive geographical configuration—whether the sun, which illumines the Mars as Well as the earth, can possibly shine upon no living creature there; whether those rains fecundate nothing; whether .there be no live thing —no bird or beast —to breathe the atmosphere; and whether Mars, wbich rushes so rapidly through space that we can follow its progress from week to week, and even from day to day, is like an express train travelling along a railroad without passengers or merchandise.—All the Year Hound.