5 o FROM AN EASY CHAIR 



sees a mosaic of coloured dots in the blazing sunlight of 

 the pictures painted by the French school of so-called 

 " vibristes " (Monod and others). Perhaps the most re- 

 markable of these photographs was a set of prints from 

 untouched photographs of the planet Mars, executed in 

 July 1907 by Professor Perceval Lowell at his observa- 

 tory in Arizona. 



The Mars photographs are each about as big as a 

 dried pea (that is the biggest size possible with the 

 feeble light reflected by Mars), but "several of the 

 canals,' 1 says Mr. Lowell, " are distinctly visible on the 

 photographs, and one has been photographed double." 

 I should have liked to examine these photographs in a 

 good light with a lens. The statement quoted means 

 that the canals in Mars can no longer be regarded as due 

 to errors of eyesight and imagination, and that the 

 annual doubling or formation of a second canal parallel 

 to what was earlier in the year a single canal, is actually 

 recorded by a disinterested, impartial photographic plate. 

 Are these canals the work of intelligent inhabitants of 

 Mars ? I will not venture to say in reply more than 

 this, that I have never heard any other explanation of 

 their occurrence. But that, of course, still leaves the 

 matter open. 



2 1 . Origin of Names by Errors in Copying 



A curious illustration of a mistake perpetuated by a 

 clerical error is the title of Viscount Glerawly. The 

 title was intended to have been Glenawly, but the bad 

 writing of a clerk converted the " n " into an " r," and 

 the name having been so entered in the patent of 

 nobility, or some such document, could not be altered. 

 The same thing has happened to the mammoth. His 

 proper native name is " mammont," but * fc mont " became 



