zo SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 
Mars presents the aspect of a parched desert, where life, with- 
out an artificial supply of water, could not exist. But, as in 
our own cloudless skies. the air contains large stores of invis- 
ible vapor, so it is evident that the same conditions prevail 
in the clear Martian skies, for when the Martian polar regions 
are turned away from the sun in the Martian winter, there is 
an extensive precipitation of snow, known to us as the polar 
snow cap, and as the season slowly changes to spring and sum- 
mer, (the Martian year is nearly twice the length of the earth 
year,) the polar snow cap is gradually melted, and a dark belt, 
presumably consisting of water, is formed around the white, 
receding snow cap. 
Whether this in an artificial basin for the retention of the 
water till it can be utilized, we have no means of knowing, but 
this we do know, that in their season, dark straight lines ex- 
tend at various angles from this polar belt towards the equator, 
intersecting other lines similarly projected from the opposite 
pole, their meeting places forming apparent oases or basins. 
Belts of Verdure. 
Now these lines, in order to be visible in our most powerful 
telescopes, must be at least five miles in width, but are as- 
sumed to be from three to five times that breadth. Of course 
it is not to be supposed that there are any artificial water 
courses of that width. Such a hypothesis is neither reasonable 
nor called for. But suppose that each main canal, possibly of 
but a few feet in width, with its system of small lateral 
branches, were employed to irrigate a belt of territory 20 to 30 
miles in width, then in its season there would spring up a mass 
of dark green vegetation which would form a marked con- 
trast to the yellow, unirrigated desert adjacent to it, and that 
contrast would become strikingly apparent to terresrial observ- 
ers with powerful glasses. 
Thus we see, at a distance of 40,000,000 miles, certain dark 
lines, which mysteriously appear, coincident with the receding 
snow caps, and as the season advances to the harvest period of 
their year, the lines become dim and some of them fade out 
entirely. For these belts of dark, luxuriant vegetation, having 
ripened, have probably changed to the tawney color of our 
California fields and hills in summer and autumn. So the 
Martian astronomer, loking down upon the State of California, 
will in the winter and spring months, see a belt of vivid green, 
150 miles in width and 800 miles in length, but this will change 
to a saffron hue during the last half of the year, greatly to the 
mystification of the Martians. 
What are the Martians raising in these lone bands of ver- 
