NATURAL SCIENCE: 



A Monthly Review of Scientific Progress. 



No. 31. Vol. V. SEPTEMBER. 1894. 



NOTES AND COMMENTS. 



Organic Life on Mars. 



THE hold taken upon the popular mind by the astonishing revela- 

 tions of astronomy is again in evidence. The planet Mars is the 

 nearest neighbour to the earth, and at present the two are at the 

 nearest parts of their circling courses. From the observatory at Nice, 

 Mr. Javelle has seen on the southern edge of Mars a luminous pro- 

 jection. In accordance with the admirable co-operation among the 

 astronomers all over the world, this interesting observation has been 

 telegraphed from station to station. These, telegrams naturally have 

 found their way to the public Press, and from their reaction upon the 

 journalistic mind have come a crop of articles and interviews, of 

 speculations and theories, and all these turn upon the twin questions 

 — is the planet Mars inhabited ? and are the inhabitants signalling 

 to us ? 



We share with everyone else the compelling fascination of these 

 questions. Time was when the earth, like a little child, thought itself 

 the centre of all things : now it has grown up enough to know that it 

 is the tiniest unit in the ordered polity of the universe. It is an 

 insignificant appanage of a system which is the merest dot in star- 

 sown space. In the effort to reach some cognisance of our place in 

 the unknown, the planet Mars seems to offer some hope of a 

 standard of comparison, some basis for induction. With a knowledge 

 only of this earth, the imagination may run riot and people the planets 

 of this and other systems with benign or evil figments of fancy. With 

 a knowledge, however slight, of the actual state of things on the 

 surface of Mars, we should lose the morbid fictions engendered by 

 isolation and at the least gain a method by which speculation might 

 be guided. 



It is now known that the physical conditions here and on Mars 



M 



