THE PLANET MARS: IS IT INHABITED? 125 



ence upon Earth of an intelligent and cultivated people, and 

 should amount to a prehminary invitation to further correspond- 

 ence. Such people were unaware that, even if the idea were good 

 and promising, such lines would require to be four hundred or five 

 hundred miles long and some fifty miles broad. But oh, the irony 

 of the matter ! Here, Terrestrials, in their simplicity, have been 

 discussing how to open communication with Mars, and all the 

 while, these supposed cousins of ours, in their intricate and scien- 

 tifically arranged network of vast engineering schemes, extending 

 over thirteen thousand two hundred miles by at least three thou- 

 sand six hundred and seventy-five miles, thus setting absolutely at 

 naught our most gigantic achievements, have been practically sig- 

 nalling to us for, not only hundreds, but quite possibly thousands 

 of years ; and if their astronomical at all equal their mechanical 

 and engineering skill, they have doubtless been watching and 

 waiting for some responsive sign that beings, of intellectual cafibre 

 equal to themselves, existed upon Earth. 



We gather from Mr. Lowell's observations that this polar sea 

 water not only flows out on all sides towards the Equator, thus 

 irrigating the large dark areas, but by means of gigantic canals is 

 tapped, conveyed, and distributed to the numerous oases or junc- 

 tions in the reddish ochre desert regions, which seem to serve as 

 centres for the further distribution of the precious liquid. At the 

 1894 observation, these canals were first observed on May 31st 

 (after Mars' Vernal Equinox on April 7th, 1894), in the dark areas 

 about the Syrtis Major; and soon after this, in June, there 

 appeared, as the result of the snow melting, " one continuous belt 

 of blue-green, obliterating the whole intermediate reddish-ochre 

 regions, and stretching from the Syrtis Major to the Columns of 

 Hercules." After this, their history was one long fading out, from 

 various shades of colour, interspersed with glints of orange-yellow, 

 until finally, with some intermittent changes, the spring and 

 summer verdure had changed to an orange-ochre. The long dark 

 fines which in June had joined the Polar Sea to Syrtis Major, had 

 also by October nearly disappeared, and a month after this what 

 remained of the more Southern dark areas had faded, so as to be 

 scarcely perceptible. To the question, What causes these vast 

 and wholesale changes from blue-green to orange-ochre? Mr. Lowell 



