S18 Professor Percival Loirell [April 8, 



journey to that other world, but to-night one more such interplane- 

 tary voyage must suffice. This shall give you sight of the great new 

 canals that appeared last September in a region of the planet where 

 no canals had ever showed before. That you may fully realise 

 what you are to see the plate shall be accompanied by a drawing in 

 which of course the phenomenon stands much better displayed, and a 

 word of preface may not be out of place. To begin with, you should 

 know that the lines you will see are certainties, not matters admit- 

 ting of the slightest question for all theii- strauge regularity, and so 

 seen by all those who from the most prolonged and careful study are 

 qualified to speak. Schiaparelli described them as looking as if they 

 had been laid down with rule and compass, and not only I, but all of 

 my assistants, have seen them thousands of times the same. Nor 

 are they near the limit of vision in our air, which sometimes sets the 

 planet against the sky as if etched in a steel engraving. 



In the second place, the technical word "canals" does not mean 

 canals that are dug, but artificially fertilised strips of country, con- 

 nected with, and vivified by, the turning to such account of the 

 melting of the polar cap. Lastly, I may say that by saying that 

 organic life exists there we do not mean human beings. And now to 

 the facts recently observed. 



On September 80 last, when the region to the east of the Syrtis 

 Major came round into view again after its periodic hiding of six 

 weeks due to the unequal days of the Earth and Mars, two imposing 

 canals were seen leading up from the Syrtis to the south east, which 

 had not been there at the preceding presentation. Research showed 

 that not only had they never previously been seen, but that they could 

 never have existed as such before. The long and full records of the 

 observatory extending over fifteen years made it possible to be abso- 

 lutely sure of this. Yet these canals with several subsidiary ones 

 fitted into the general canal system as if tliev had always made part 

 of it. 



Not only was their coming into existence established by the draw- 

 ings, but the photographs of previous years testified to the same un- 

 heralded advent. Their presentments on the screen will show you 

 this, and by comparing the drawings and photographs made at tlie 

 same epoch the oneness of the two becomes evident, while the change 

 of both with the Martian seasons is clearly portrayed. 



Turning now to Jupiter, we find a completely different set of 

 features registered on the plates, no less corroborative of the drawings 

 made of him at Flagstaff', but utterly unlike those of Mars. Their 

 symmetry is immediately striking, and then no less is its purely lati- 

 tudinal character. They are belts, bright and dark, banding the 

 disk halfway to the poles. Their behaviour, however, indicates in 

 them no regard for the sun, as they are quite oblivious both to the 

 planet's day and to his year. They last indifferently through both, 

 and disappear at their own good time. That the brighter are clouds 



