MIRACLES OF SCIENCE 



presents very striking evidence against Professor 

 Lowell's theory. 



Professor Maunder's experiments were made, 

 curiously enough, not with the aid of telescopes, but 

 in an ordinary school-room, the observers being a 

 company of schoolboys. He placed on the wall a 

 diagram on which he had made a few spots or irreg- 

 ular markings. Boys at different points in the 

 schoolroom were asked to look carefully at this dia- 

 gram and to draw what they saw. The results were 

 striking. The boys nearest the diagram detected the 

 little irregular markings and represented them under 

 their true forms. Those at the back of the room saw 

 only the broadest features of the diagram, and made 

 vague drawings that might represent continents and 

 seas. But the boys in the middle of the room, unable 

 to recognize the markings as they really existed, 

 gained an illusive impression of a network of straight 

 lines, sometimes with dots at the points of meeting. 



"Advancing from a distance toward the diagram, " 

 says Professor Maunder, "the process of develop- 

 ment became quite clear. At the back of the room 

 no straight lines were seen; as the observer came 

 slowly forward, first one straight line would appear 

 completely, then another, and so on till all the chief 

 canals drawn by Schiaparelli and Lowell in the re- 

 gion represented had come into evidence in their 

 proper places. Advancing still farther, the canals 

 disappeared, and the little irregular markings which 

 had given rise to them were perceived in their true 

 forms." 



This experiment suggests, then, that the discovery 



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