THE PLACET OF WAR. 





OOO 



to what might have to be done when Mars was I 

 reexamined). He called this chart his own, and 

 proceeded to rename most of the lands and seas. 

 He treated some English observers rather con- 

 temptuously, dismissing Sir J. Herschel alto- 

 gether, relegating Dawes to a small sea, De la 

 Rue to another, Lockyer to a third (all three 

 seas close together). The most marked feature 

 of all, a dark sea, shaped somewhat like an hour- 

 glass, had been assigned to Kaiser, a German as- 

 tronomer, who had made many interesting obser- 

 vations of the planet. M. Flammarion dismisses 

 the German to a corner of that sea, and leaves 

 the sea itself without any name except one de- 

 scriptive of its shape — possibly intending that 

 the name of a French writer on astronomy should 

 fill the space. 



On this Dr. Terby, of Louvain, rose indignant. 

 In astronomic ire and areographic grief, he sol- 

 emnly denounced the new nomenclature. To say 

 truth, he had some reason to be annoyed, because 

 his labors had been freely used with a form of 

 acknowledgment which, though seemingly pro- 

 fuse, by no means did justice to his claims. 

 " Nine times," said M. Flammarion, " does the 

 name of Dr. Terby appear in my account of the 

 lands and seas of Mars." " I would you had 

 mentioned it once only," retorts Dr. Terby, " with 

 the statement that the account is entirely taken 

 from my labors," where it is not borrowed from 

 the before-mentioned English astronomers. M. 

 Flammarion promises, in return, never to mention 

 Dr. Terby again. " Mea culpa : jc ne le ferai 

 plus," he says, adding, as a pleasant parting 

 word, " a tout bien prendre cependant, il n'y a 

 rien d'etonnant a ce qu'on se bataille a propos 

 de Mars ; esperons qu'il n'y aura pas de sang 

 verse, et que la colore du petit lion Beige se 

 calmera d'elle-meme." 



Let us turn, however, from these small bick- 

 erings to the consideration of the planet itself. 

 Already in these pages ' we have discussed two 

 theories of the planet Mars regarded as another 

 world. One is the theory that he is at present 

 iuhabited, and that too by creatures which, though 

 they may differ very much from the inhabitants 

 of this earth in shape and appearance, may yet 

 be as high in the scale of living creatures. In 

 particular this theory assumes as probable, if not 

 certain, the belief that among the inhabitants of 

 Mars there are creatures endowed with reason. 

 According to the other theory, which we have 



1 See CornMtt Magazine for May. 1S71, "Life in 

 Mars ; -1 arid for July, ls>73, " A Whewellite Essay on 



Mars." 



called the Whewellite theory, Mars is altogether 

 unfit to be the abode of creatures resembling 

 those which inhabit our earth ; neither vegetable 

 nor animal forms known to us could exist on the 

 planet ; in fine, " all the conditions of life in Mars, 

 all that tends to the comfort and well-being of 

 Martian creatures, must differ utterly from what 

 is human on earth." We have also in our essay 

 on " Life past and future in other Worlds " (in 

 the Cornhill Magazine for June, 1875) considered 

 a general theory which in our opinion is far more 

 probable than either the Brewsterian or the Whe- 

 wellite — the theory, namely, that each planet has 

 a life-bearing stage, but that the duration of this 

 stage of its existence, though measurable perhaps 

 by hundreds of millions of years, is yet exceed- 

 ingly short by comparison with the duration of 

 the preceding stage of preparation and the se- 

 quent stage of decay and death. From the direct 

 application of the laws of probability to this theo- 

 ry, the chances are shown to be very small indeed 

 that life exists at this present time on any planet 

 selected at random and without reference to what 

 observation has revealed. Precisely as, when we 

 know that a bag contains several thousand black 

 balls and only a few white ones, the chance that 

 a ball taken at random is a white one is exceed- 

 ingly small : so, the period of a planet's fitness 

 for life being short compared with the preceding 

 and following stages, the chances are very small 

 that this present time, which is, so far as other 

 .planets are concerned, taken at random, falls 

 within the period of any given planet's fitness to 

 be the abode of living creatures. The telescope 

 and the spectroscope may correct this inference, 

 just as on looking at a ball taken from such a 

 bag as we have described the drawer of the ball 

 might find to his surprise that he had taken one 

 of the white ones, few though they were com- 

 pared with the black ones. But apart from such 

 observations, the chances must be regarded as 

 exceedingly small (according to this theory) that 

 any given planet is at this present time inhabit- 

 ed. Nevertheless, two conclusions, according well 

 with ordinary conceptions as to the fitness of 

 things, follow from this theory : 1. Our earth is 

 but one among many millions of worlds inhabited 

 at this present time; 2. Every planet is at some 

 time or other, and for a very long period, the 

 abode of life. These three points — the small 

 probability (apart from telescopic observation) 

 that any given planet is inhabited now ; thegreat 

 probability that many millions (out of thousands 

 of millions of planets) are inhabited now; and 

 the equally great probability that every planet 



