352 FROM NEBULA TO NEBULA 



1. First of all, there is the question of temperature 

 climate. When we say that the sun sheds only 4-9 as 

 much heat on Mars as on our earth, what does the state- 

 ment mean? By general understanding, Mars, without 

 any solar warmth at all, would possess a surface temper- 

 ature in the neighborhood of the absolute zero, or 461 

 F. and so would the earth. Even receiving the generous 

 quota of heat we do, the mean annual temperature of 

 New York City is only 53, of Pittsburgh, 62, and of 

 Flagstaff, where Lowell himself was stationed, 58; in 

 other words, the sun's heat, according to common ac- 

 ceptation, serves to raise the superficial temperature of 

 our planet 60+461, or 521 F.! Four-ninths of this 

 number is 232, which being deducted from 461 gives 

 us the exceedingly low average temperature for Mars of 

 229 below zero, or 261 below the freezing point of 

 water! This is surely a long way from the +48 F. that 

 Mr. Lowell claims to have derived as the mean tempera- 

 ture for that planet! 



2. Vegetation is the food basis of all animal life. 

 Even granting a decline of but 20 in our mean annual 

 temperature, complicated with the same sort of disas- 

 trous fluctuations we have now from week to week, day 

 to day and even hour to hour; what food of value for the 

 sustentation of human life could be grown outside the 

 tropics ? And allowing there a reduction of an additional 

 twenty degrees would inevitably put an end to all ter- 

 restrial vegetation, save lichens, weeds, grasses, and the 

 like. Yet this reduction would not be more than one- 

 seventh the temperature disparity between the two 

 planets. 



3. And did Professor Lowell in his zeal really suc- 

 ceed in persuading himself into the belief that, given suffi- 

 cient ice-water, vegetation in the arctic zones would pro- 

 ceed as speedily as in the tropics ? His own words leave 

 no room for doubt that such is his meaning. For, blindly 

 enamored of his theory, he proceeds, in close logical se- 

 quence, to describe how first the coming sun thaws the 

 snow cap, then how the water is made to descend by arti- 



