THE MYSTERY OF MARS — WILKINS 231 



on which there is very little water, most of it being locked up in the 

 polar caps. But how does the water released by the melting of the 

 polar caps reach the grayish patches, as it to all appearances does ? 



It was in 1877 that Mars made one of its close approaches to the 

 earth, and modern study of the planet dates from that year. One 

 spectacular discovery was that of its two satellites by Asaph Hall 

 with what was then the largest refracting telescope in the world, of 26 

 inches in aperture. While this discovery came from America, another 

 came from Italy, where Signor Schiaparelli, using a telescope of S% 

 inches in aperture, found a number of straight and narrow lines which 

 he called canali, the Italian word for channels. This was translated 

 into English as canals, and for the first time the world heard of the 

 famous canals on Mars. 



For many years nobody else succeeded in seeing the canals, and they 

 were put down to Schiaparelli's imagination but gradually they were 

 confirmed by other observers with larger telescopes. In 1894 an 

 American amateur, Prof. Percival Lowell, built his own observa- 

 tory at Flagstaff in Arizona, and equipped it with a fine-quality 24- 

 inch refracting telescope for observing the planets, in particular Mars. 

 Professor Lowell's results were of the highest interest, and some of 

 them were very startling, although scientific men have not accepted 

 them in their entirety. 



Professor Lowell believed that Mars is a drying-up world, where 

 every drop of water is precious. The inhabitants were in a sore plight ; 

 they had to cultivate crops, and the only water available was that in 

 the polar caps. There was only one thing to do. The inhabitants be- 

 came one community, and constructed a vast network of channels for 

 the water to be conveyed from the polar caps to the regions where it 

 is needed, which are the patches of vegetation. Since open canals 

 would be wasteful and the loss by evaporation enormous, the canals 

 must be covered, and it would be necessary for the water to be helped, 

 for instance, by pumping, in its world-wide journey. Finally certain 

 dark spots, occasionally found at the spots where one canal crosses 

 another, were considered by Professor Lowell as the centers of civili- 

 zation, the cities of Mars. Lowell implied that the Martians were 

 engineers, and that the canals were artificial waterways dug by them 

 in an attempt to preserve the race in its fight against the encroaching 

 desert. 



This fascinating idea captures the imagination, for if true it means 

 that we see on Mars markings made by an alien but intelligent race. 

 In order to distinguish one spot from another, and to compare draw- 

 ings made by different observers, names have been given to the various 

 spots, the principal ones being shown on the chart, which is on a 

 cylindrical projection. A glance at the map (pi. 2) will show that zero 



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