SCHIAPARELLI'S LATEST VIEWS REGARDING MARS.' 



By William II. riCKERiNG. 



It is ])robable that the astronomer whose name is most closely linked 

 witli the planet Mars at the present time is Giovanni Schiaparelli ; 

 and yet, although nearly everybody has heard of Schiaparelli's canals, 

 very few astronomers even, outside of France and Italy, had until 

 recently more than a very vague notion what were really his ideas in 

 regard to them. This is due probably to the fact that he has written 

 exclusively in Italian, a language which very few American astrono- 

 mers, and I believe very few English ones, understand. To this fact 

 chiefly, I think, is due the great incredulity with which his observa- 

 tions have been treated, at leavSt until recently, in both of these coun- 

 tries. Astronomers could understand his maps; they knew, therefore, 

 wliat he had done, but they could not understand his descriptions of 

 his observations, and so were incredulous regarding their accuracy. 

 Moreover, such a mass of detail appeared upon his maps, which had 

 not before been seen by others, that it comi)letely masked the more 

 striking features of the planet, thus rendering its appearance entirely 

 ditferent from that which it presented in the telescope under ordinary 

 atmospheric conditions. 



But within the last few years a change has occurred. Flammarion 

 has translated a large part of Schiaparelli's writings into French, a 

 language with which most English speaking astronomers are familiar, 

 and moreover the canals have been seen by a number of astronomers 

 whose descriptions of them in English and French could be under- 

 stood and were found to agree with those of Schiaparelli. 



But errors are still frequently made by people who might be expected 

 to know better. Thus, many people suppose that Schiaparelli was the 

 original discoverer of the canals, a claim which he never made for him- 

 self. In point of fact, some of them appear upon maps of the planet 

 published more than fifty years ago. The former English incredulity 

 in the matter seems the more strange, since many of the canals were 

 seen by Dawes in 1864 and by Burton and Dreyer in 1879. Schia- 

 parelli, however, has discovered far more canals than anyone else, and 

 he is also the discoverer of their gemination. 



' From Astronomy and Astro-Physics, Vol. XIII, Nos. 8 and 9, October and Novem- 

 ber, 1894. 



113 



SM 94 8 



