166 NOTES ON MARS. 



therefore judge that, though there may once have been or though there 

 may yet be intelligent life on Mars, the laws of proliability would 

 seem against the supposition that there is such life there at this 

 moment. 



We haye also heard surmises as to the possibility of the communica- 

 tion of interplanetary signals between the earth and Mars, Init the 

 suggestion is a preposterous one. Seeing that a canal GO miles wide 

 and 1,000 miles long is an object only to be discerned on exceptional 

 occasions and under most fayorable circumstances, what possibility 

 would there be that, even if there were inhabitants on Mars who desired 

 to signal this earth, they could ever succeed in doing so? We are 

 accustomed to see ships signaling by flags, but what would haye to be 

 the size of the flags by which the earth could signal to Mars or Mars 

 signal to the earth? To be effectiye for such purpose each of the flags 

 should ])e at least as big as Ireland. It is true, no doubt, that small 

 planets would be fitted for the residence of large beings, and large 

 planets would be proper for small beings. The Lilliputians might be 

 sought for on a globe like Jupiter, and the Brobdingnagians on a globe 

 like Mars, and not yice yersa, as might be hastily supposed. But no 

 Brobdingnagian's arms would be mighty enough to waye the flag on 

 Mars which we shovdd be able to see here. No building that we could 

 raise, eyen were it a hundred times more massiye than the Great 

 Pyramid, would be discernible b}" the Martian astronomer, eyen had he 

 the keenest eyes and the most potent telescopes of which our experience 

 has giyen us any conception. 



n. The Canals of Mars^ 



By Miss M. A. Okk. 



The physical condition of Mars is a problem oyer which discussion 

 still rages with unabated yigor. While Mr. Lowell sees in the Martian 

 "canals" a yast S3"stem of artificial irrigation, and M. du Ligondes 

 geological fissures, through which rise to the frozen surface yiyif3"ing 

 vapors from a still heated interior, M. Antoniadi ascribes their doubling 

 to a defect in focusing, and others disbelieve in even their single 

 existence. But the enigmatical lines have appeared to so many, and 

 in the main with such consistent similarity, that the ranks of these 

 unbelievers grow thin. Between rejecting- the canals altogether, how- 

 ever, and accepting them as actual phj^sical entities there are other 

 possible alternatives. Mr. Walter Maunder, in an article in Knowl- 

 edge for November, 1801, and more recently Signor Cerulli, in recount- 

 ing his observations of Mars in the opposition of 1896-97, at his private 

 observator}^ of Collurania (Teramo), showed how the mathematical 



'From Knowledge, February 1, 1901. [See tutude on Canals of Mara in Smith- 

 sonian Report for 189-1.] 



