Upon the announcement of Schiaparelli 's discoveries, 

 astronomers all over the world proclaimed their inability to 

 find these markings, and they charged that Schiaparelli had 

 been the victim of an hallucination; others, although clearly 

 detecting these markings and even drawing them, asserted 

 they were "illusions due to the property of light itself, the 

 inability of the eye to maintain its mechanism of accommo- 

 dation, the behavior of air waves, temporary alteration of the 

 focus of the eye, undetected astigmatism," etc., etc., but in 

 1886 Perrotin and Thollon, of the Nice Observatory, emphat- 

 ically confirmed the existence of these canali, and now they 

 are recognized everywhere by astronomers. 



Professor Percival Lowell, from his Observatory at Flag- 

 staff, Arizona, has devoted many years to the observation and 

 study of Mars, and Professor Schiaparelli heartily concurred 

 in his conclusions from the results of his investigations. Pro- 

 fessor Lowell announced that on September 30, 1905, "two 

 striking canals became evident where no canals had ever pre- 

 viously been seen. The present phenomna show that the 

 canals still are in process of creation; that we have actually 

 seen them formed under our very eyes. The phenomena tran- 

 scend any natural law, and are explicable only so far as can 

 be seen, by the presence out yonder of animate will." 



On December 21). 1909, before the British Astronomical 

 Association, Professor E. W. Maunder, Superintendent of the 

 Solar Department of the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, 

 evolved the following pronunciamento : "Nobody has ever 

 seen a single canal on Mars. There has never been any real 

 ground for supposing that the markings on the planet supplied 

 any evidence of artificial action. It were better for science 

 that the canal theory lie abandoned completely." 



And now comes Professor Hale, who says that during tin- 

 recent (dose opposition, his great 60-inch Reflector "showed no 

 traces of the geometrical network of narrow 'canals' described 

 by Lowell. The extremities of the Sabaeus Sinus and the 

 adjoining parts of the Schiaparelli 'canals,' Gihon and Had- 

 dekel, were seen to be broad and irregular, very unlike their 

 appearance in Powell's drawings. During the periods of best 

 definition, when a power of 800 was required to show the 

 smallest details, they were resolved into minute, twisted and 

 broken filaments, not fluctuating in position, but definite and 

 unmistakable in character. Another 'canal,' though not thus 

 resolved, differed more markedly from Lowell's representa- 

 tions. Instead of cont inning for a great distance as a narrow 

 straight line, it terminated abruptly, the irregular shape of 

 the extremity being plainly seen." 



In one of his Epistles. Pope asks, 



"Who shall decide, when doctors disagree, 

 And soundest casuists doubt, like yon and me?" 



