SCHIAPARELLl's LATEST VIEWS REGARDING MARS. 123 



These lines or strijies are the famous canals of Mars, of wliicli so 

 much has been said. As far as we have been able to observe them 

 hitherto, they are certainly fixed configurations upon the planet. The 

 Nilosyrtis has been seen in that place for nearly one hundred years, and 

 some of the others for at least thirty years. Their length and arrange- 

 ment are constant, or vary only between very narrow limits. Each of 

 them always begins and ends between the same regions, lint their 

 appearance and their degree of visibility vary greatly, for all of them, 

 from one opposition to another, and even from one week to another, 

 and these variations do not take place simultaneously and according to 

 the same laws for all, but in most cases happen apparently capriciously, 

 or at least according to laws not sufticiently simple for us to be able to 

 unravel. Often one or more become indistinct, or ev^en wholly invisi- 

 ble, whilst others in their vicinity increase to the point of becoming 

 conspicuous even in telescopes of moderate power. The first of our 

 maps shows all those that have been seen in a long series of observa 

 tions. This does not at all corresiiond to the appearance of JNIars at any 

 given period, because generally only a few are visible at once.' 



Every canal (for now we shall so call them) opens at its ends either 

 into a sea, or into a lake, or into another canal, or else into the inter- 

 section of several other canals. None of them have yet been seen cut 

 off in the middle of the continent, remaining without beginning or 

 without end. This fact is of the highest importance. The canals may 

 intersect among themselves at all possible angles, but by preference 

 they converge toward the small spots to which we have given the name 

 of lakes. For example, seven are seen to converge in Lacus Phceuicis, 

 eight in Trivium Charontis, six in Lume Lacus, and six in Ismenius 

 Lacus. 



The normal appearance of a canal is that of a nearly uniform stripe, 

 black, or at least of a dark color, similar to that of the seas, in which 

 the regularity of its general course does not exclude small variations in 

 its breadth and small sinuosities in its two sides. Often it happens 

 that such a dark line opening out upon the sea is enlarged into the form 

 of a trumpet, forming a huge bay, similar to the estuaries of certain 

 terrestrial streams. The Margaritifer Sinus, the Aonius Sinus, the 



'Jn a footuote the author refers to a drawing of Mars made by himself, September 

 15, 1892, and says, - - - " At tlio top of the disk the Mare Erythra-um aud the 

 Mare Australe appear divided by a great curved peuiusiihi, shaped like a sickle, 

 producing an unusual appearance in the area called Deucalionis Kegio, which was 

 prolonged that year so as to reach the islands of Noachis and Argyre. This region 

 forms with them a continuous whole, but with faint traces of separation occurring 

 here and there in a length of nearly 6,000 kilometers (4,000 miles). Its color, much 

 less brilliant than that of the continents, was a mixture of their yellow with the 

 brownish gray of the neighboring seas." The interesting feature of this note is 

 the remark that it was an unusual appearance, the region referred to being that in 

 which the central branch of the fork of the Y appeared. Since no such branch was 

 conspicuously visible this year, it would therefore seem from the above that it was 

 the opposition of 1892 that was peculiar, and not the present one. — Translator. 



