118 THE PLANET MARS: IS IT INHABITED? 



These precious moments are the astronomer's opportunity and 

 reward. The finer details of the planetary surfaces come out with 

 startling distinctness, and he sees in a moment that which hours 

 of the intensest gazing had failed to reveal. Thus, it came to 

 pass that Schiaparelli's " Canals in Mars," partially discovered 

 nineteen years ago, were largely treated, even by astronomerSj as 

 myths of the imagination. But just as truth can always afford to 

 wait, so vindication came at last from the pellucid air of Arizona, 

 where three astronomers at the Observatory at Flagstaff, East of 

 California, watched the planet Mars from May 24th, 1894, to 

 April 3rd, 1895. During that time, to mention nothing else, nine 

 hundred and seventeen drawings and sketches were made. And 

 since the date named, it may be added, confirmation and new 

 discovery have served but to endorse the general accuracy of the 

 observations of the astronomers referred to. 



As a rough approximation to the visibility of Mars, when 

 telescopically examined, we may here say that an opera-glass, 

 magnifying three or three and a half times, shows our Moon about 

 as plainly, and with detail similarly pronounced, as a colossal 

 telescope, eighteen or twenty inches aperture, under the highest 

 favourable conditions and in exceptional moments, would, with a 

 power of say four hundred, reveal to us the markings on the 

 planet Mars. Young amateur telescopists may be interested in 

 knowing that the writer, with his four-inch aperture, achromatic, 

 in Leeds outskirts, while observing Mars in December, 1896, 

 between one and two a.m., during one of those brief precious 

 intervals of atmospheric steadiness, saw distinctly (using diagonal, 

 Mars being in Taurus, and near zenith) what he recognised as 

 Syrtis Major skirting the Eastern limb, also shimmering darkish 

 bars upwards to the right which he identified as Oceanus, Mare 

 Icarium, and long arm of Margaritifer Sinus, the whole covering 

 an equatorial width of three or four thousand miles. Mars at this 

 observation was more than fifty-three millions of miles away, a 

 distance which an express train, travelling fifty miles per hour 

 continuously, would require more than a hundred years to traverse. 

 One of our Members (Mr. Townshend), with his nine and a half 

 inch reflector, it need scarcely be added, has seen much more on 

 the planet than what is described above The polar snows, when 



