GREAT FLOOD ON THE PLANET MARS.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXI, Issue 2534, 6 October 1888, Page 2 (Supplement)

GREAT FLOOD ON THE PLANET MARS.

No one of our neighbours in the solar system is better known to terrestrial astronomers than " the red planet Mars " partly because of its relative proximity —35,000,000 miles—and partly because it presents so many points of resemblance to the small globe which we inhabit. It is true that its year is twice as long as ours, consisting as it does of 687 days; but it daily revolution on its own axis is effected in 21 hours 37 minutes 23 seconds and it has a couple of diminutive moons which arc so rapid in their movements that the first traverses its entire orbit in 7 hours 39 minutes 15 seconds, and the other in 16 hours 17 minutes 54 seconds. Of late years the surface of Mars —especially as regards its equatorial regions—has been pretty well mapped out by careful and systematic observers. There is, for example, Hind's Peninsula sometimes known as Libya, bounded ou the west by a mediterranean sea, called " the sea of the hour-glass," from its peculiar shape ; on the. south by another great expanse of water named after the well-known French astronomer, Flarninarion ; 011 the east and north by great canals ; and on the north-west by a small circular lake called Lake Mturia. Well ever since the month of April last this equatorial country has been completely submerged. If the fact rested upon the testimony of a single observer, aided by instruments of one observatory only, we might receive the statement with some misgivings; but it is attested by the astronomers in charge of the observatories in Paris, Nice, Milan, and Louvain. The Martaiu Libya, which ordinarily appears straw-coloured, is now exactly like the contiguous lakes, canals, and seas in the sombreness of its hue. Summer commences in that planet on the lGtli of February and so far as could be ascertained, the last winter there was one of unusual severity in the boreal hemisphere, where so large an accumulation of ice and snow takes place that, the Royal astronomer of Ireland has observed in his Story of the Heavens, "an ice-cap 011 Mars, with its shaply defined margin, is a most striking feature in a telescopic view of the planet."

The territory submerged is larger than the whole of France ; but whether it is inhabited or whether it is merely a tropical plain, so slightly raised above the sea as to be liable to periodical inundations, must be a matter for conjecture only, until science lias furnished us with telescopic and reflective apparatus far more powerful than anything we now possess. Not the least remarkable of phenomena connected with this great flood is the appearance of a second canal running parallel with the one so familiar to astronomers who have studied the geography of Mars. Concurrently with the remarkable changes thus described there has been a steady diminution of the great reservoirs of ice aud snow at the north pole of Mars; although, as late as the 27th of May last, M. Flammarion observed a white tract, estimated to be about 200 miles wide. To crown all, the polar ice-cap is seen to have been cut in two by a canal, which has effected a junction between the two arctic seas in that part of the planet. According to an expression employed by M. l'\iye, in a paper which be read on the subject, before the Academy of Sciences in Paris, in the early part of the month of .rune last, "it is as if works had been tarried on there for tho purpose of effecting a communication between the two seas." The (|itest.ion naturally arise*. Are th.--.se I'u.liige.s Oil Hi" surface of Mai's jthibItlablc to met err-l-ieic,.!, and fortuitous or to nii"ial :in-l oidieaiy eun.-s ; It not, the first lime they h-ivo b'-?n noticed ; and the French astronomer seems to consider lhat the po-sibility of their being the result of ail artificial sv-itoui of irri'jntion, curried out upon a very large scale by tin; inhabitants of that planet, i.-i not one to be hastily discarde 1 as ntterlv absurd