THE PLANET MARS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9073, 25 April 1908, Page 3

THE PLANET MARS.

The Windsor Magazine contains a very interesting article by Professor Lowell on "The Planet Mars." He says:—"Mars can be most advantageously viewed by magnifying it to about twenty-five times the size of moon as it appears to the naked eye, or about four times the size of the moon as seen through an operaglass. It was thus that it appeared when viewed at a power of 390 from Flagstaff, last July, during the period of its greatest resplendence. At such a power the features of the Martian globe stand out distinct, often as clear-cut as a steel engraving; and their great dissimilarity to those of the moon is strikingly revealed. Instead of a chalk-like surface pitted with craters iri almost limitless number, one looks upon a beautiful colour-map where bluegreen patches diversify an oohrish red ground covered by brilliant white. There are no signs of mountains on the smooth expanse; instead, an amazing system of reticulated lines—one would say that it was a cobwenbed globe which the orderly witches of Nature had neglected to sweep. And yet it is its very orderliness that surprises one. The design has all the geometric precision of one of > those delicately-constructed spiderwebs which become the more admirable the more minutely they are scanned. As one's vision grows steadier this meah of linear markings takes on a more and more artificial look. All the lines lead with absolute precision to definite centres. These lines are th-3 much-talked-of-canals of Aflars. In spite of being in everybody's mouth, they have been in very few eyes. It is, .'of course, not the easiest thing in the world to perceive them, or they would have been discovered years ago; ye 1 -, tu a trained eye and in the proper atmosphere, they are not, as is often erroneously stated, at the limit of visibility. On the contrary, their form ana character can be clearly and accurately perceived. But the recent great advance in our knowledge of Mars is not entirely due, as the gen- > eral reader might suppose, to the discovery of these canals and the wonderful system they constitute. It i 3 only through what we have lately learned in regard to- the general constitution of the planet that the canals themselves have/begun to be understood."