SCENES ON THE PLANETS. 337 



Anna Simson, Frau Bieber Boehm, and Frau Marie Stritt, of 

 Dresden. 



It was also decided at this congress that the next Quinquen- 

 nial International Council of Women should be held in Berlin, 

 and it will without doubt be an occasion that will mark an era in 

 the history of the progress of liberty for the women of Germany. 



SCENES ON THE PLANETS. 



By GAEKETT P. SERVISS. 



ALTHOUGH amateurs have played a conspicuous part in tele- 

 -^-^ scopic discovery among the heavenly bodies, yet every owner 

 of a small telescope should not expect to attach his name to a star. 

 But he certainly can do something perhaps more useful to himself 

 and his friends. He can follow the discoveries that others, with 

 better appliances and opportunities, have made, and can thus im- 

 part to those discoveries that sense of reality which only comes 

 from seeing things with one's own eyes. There are hundreds of 

 things continually referred to in books and writings on astronomy 

 which have but a misty and uncertain significance for the mere 

 reader, but which he can easily verify for himself with the aid of 

 a telescope of four or five inches' aperture, and which, when ac- 

 tually confronted by the senses, assume a meaning, a beauty, and 

 an importance that would otherwise entirely have escaped him. 

 Henceforth every allusion to the objects he has seen is eloquent 

 with intelligence and suggestion. 



Take, for instance, the planets that have been the subject of 

 so many observations and speculations of late years — Mars, Jupi- 

 ter, Saturn, Venus. For the ordinary reader much that is said 

 about them makes very little impression upon his mind, and is 

 almost unintelligible. He reads of the " snow patches " on Mars, 

 but unless he has actually seen the whitened poles of that planet 

 he can form no clear image in his mind of what is meant. So the 

 ^' belts of Jupiter " is a confusing and misleading phrase for almost 

 everybody except the astronomer, and the rings of Saturn are be- 

 yond comprehension unless they have actually been seen. 



It is true that pictures and photographs partially supply the 

 place of observation, but by no means so successfully as many 

 imagine. The most realistic drawings and the sharpest photo- 

 graphs in astronomy are those of the moon, yet I think nobody 

 would maintain that any picture in existence is capable of impart- 

 ing a really satisfactory visual impression of the appearance of the 



VOL. LVI. 27 



