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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



however unimaginative he may be (and we fear 

 it is an essential requisite of the surveying as- 

 tronomer that he should be as free from imagina- 

 tion as a man well can be), avoid the thought 

 that contests such as have raged upon our earth 

 for tlie possession of various regions of our plan- 

 et's surface, may be in progress out yonder in 

 space. Armies may be desolating the fairest re- 

 gions of Mars at the very time when they are 

 under the telescopic survey of the terrestrial ob- 

 server. Warlike fleets may be urging their way 

 across those seas and straits which our astrono- 

 mers have marked down in their charts of the 

 planet. We may hope, if we choose to forget 

 our own experience of " Nature red in tooth and 

 claw with ravine," that, in yonder peaceful-look- 

 ing world, there is peace among all creatures. 

 But our own earth, amid the fiercest tumults and 

 the most desolating wars, presents to the other 

 worlds that people space the same peaceful scene. 

 Distance lends so much, at least, of enchantment 

 to the view. The sun himself, over every square 

 mile of whose surface turmoil and uproar pre- 

 vail compared with which the crash of the thun- 

 derbolt is as silence, and the fiercest blast of the 

 hurricane as absolute rest, looks calm and still in 

 our skies, and even in the telescope shows signs 

 of activity only to the mind's eye, none that our 

 natural vision can appreciate. 



It is a strange thought, too, that expeditions 

 such as man makes to discover the hidden places 

 of the earth may be in progress in other planets. 

 Some among those lands and seas of Mars which 

 the astronomer contemplates in the ease and quiet 

 of his observatory may not as yet have been seen 

 by inhabitants of Mars because of the dangers 

 which prevent access to them. We may well 

 doubt, for instance, whether the bravest and most 

 enterprising Martialists have yet succeeded in 

 reaching either pole of the planet. Our eyes 

 have rested on those polar regions, even on the 

 very poles themselves, of the planet. But so, an 

 observer on Venus, possessing optical instru- 

 ments of adequate power, could see, on turn- 

 ing them upon our earth, those terrestrial polar 

 regions which the most daring of our voyagers 

 have in vain attempted to reach. And, as the 

 eyes of creatures in other worlds may thus have 

 looked upon regions of the earth of which we 

 know nothing from direct observation, so the 

 eye of man has rested on the poles of a planet 

 which is never at a less distance than 33,000,000 

 miles, while the inhabitants of that planet, if such 

 there are, may have been foiled again and again in all 

 attempts to penetrate within their polar fastnesses. 



We wonder, in passing, whether the idea has 

 ever occurred to the inhabitants of Mars that 

 Martian regions have been made the subject of 

 a war, and a somewhat lively war, though of 

 words only, among terrestrial astronomers. Such 

 has actually been the case, insomuch that if anal- 

 ogy may be our guide, astronomers in Mars and 

 Venus are not improbably contending about the 

 distribution of the four quarters of our earth, and 

 our principal seas, and lakes, and islands, and 

 peninsulas, among living and dead celebrities in 

 those planets. The story of a recent short but 

 sharp terrestrial war over the lands and seas of 

 Mars is not without its lesson, even if that lesson 

 be only a response to the time-worn question, 

 " Tantaene animis ccelcstibus irae ? " It would 

 seem that an English student of astronomy who 

 had found occasion often to refer to Martian re- 

 gions until then unnamed, had for convenience 

 assigned to these regions, after charting them (a 

 work of some labor and difficulty), the names of 

 those astronomers whose observations had thrown 

 light upon the geography of the planet — or its 

 areography, as, if pedantically inclined, we may 

 name what corresponds with the geography of 

 our earth. Thus to Sir W. Herschel one conti- 

 nent was assigned, to Secchi another, to Madler 

 a third, and to Dawes (the " eagle-eyed " ob- 

 server to whom we owe the most exact observa- 

 tions of Mars yet made) a fourth. To divers 

 other astronomers, all observers of the planet, 

 various lands and seas were assigned. This was 

 not done with the idea of honoring those as- 

 tronomers, but simply of giving convenient names 

 to features which have often to be referred to. 

 A Belgian astronomer, Dr. Terby, of Louvain, 

 who has laboriously examined and compared an 

 immense number of pictures of Mars, adopted 

 the nomenclature just referred to, adding one or 

 two names (including that of the author of the 

 English chart), but making no changes. Unfor- 

 tunately, however, he had somewhat misappre- 

 hended the object of the names, and described 

 them as " in honor of" such a one's labors, " in 

 recognition of" the discoveries of such another, 

 and so forth. This proved too much for the pa- 

 tience of a French writer on astronomy, who 

 found neither continent nor ocean (as it chanced) 

 assigned to any French observer, though large 

 tracts of land and sea were given to Laplace, 

 Leverrier, Arago, and other distinguished French- 

 men. He therefore incontinently reconstructed 

 the chart, altering it in many respects (all the al- 

 terations, singularly enough, corresponding' more 

 or less closely with Dr. Terby's suggestions as 



