Il8 THE BORDERLAND OF SCIENCE. 



account for snow regions covering many thousand 

 square miles of the surface of Mars would undoubtedly 

 lead us to infer the existence of oceans, and these 

 oceans might be expected to resemble our own oceans 

 in their general tint. According to this view, the dark 

 greenish-blue markings on Mars would come to be re- 

 garded as the Martial seas. 



If this be the case, then I may note in passing that 

 the seas of Mars cover a much smaller proportion of his 

 surface than those of our own earth, the extent of our 

 seas being to that of our continents about the propor- 

 tion of 11 to 4: in Mars the land and sea surfaces 

 would seem to be nearly equal in extent. The seas in 

 Mars are also very singularly shaped. They run into 

 long inlets and straits; many are bottle or flask- 

 shaped that is, we see a somewhat rounded inland sea 

 connected with what must be called the main ocean by 

 a narrow inlet ; and further it would seem as though 

 oceanic communication must be far more complete in 

 Mars (notwithstanding the relative smallness of his 

 ocean surface) than on our own earth. One could 

 travel by sea between all parts of Mars with very few 

 exceptions the long inlets and the flask-shaped seas 

 breaking up his land surface much more completely 

 than the actual extent of water would lead us to infer. 

 It may be supposed that on the other hand land com- 

 munication is far more complete in the case of Mars 

 than in that of our own earth. This is, indeed, the 

 case, insomuch that such Martialists as object to sea 

 travelling (and we can scarcely suppose sea-sickness 



