SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 11 
dure, with which nearly the entire surface of the planet is 
reticulated? Is it fruit, cereals, vegetables, or some melon-like 
food of rapid and luxurious growth? What machinery does 
the Martian use in cultivating the soil, in gathering his harvest, 
in hauling it to the storehouse and to the market? Is he gre- 
garious, does he dwell in cities, has he developed electric light 
and power, do his bankers refuse specie payments and resort 
to clearinghouse certificates ? 
We must wait for Mr. Hooker’s gigantic 100-inch eye, which 
will be peering into Martian and other mysteries when the 
next favorable opposition occurs in 1924, before we can satisfy 
our scientific craving for more particulars, and perhaps even 
that mighty optical aid will be unequal to the emergency, for 
Mars lies across an appalling abyss of space, too fathomless for 
human genius to bridge in the present stage of scientific 
achievement. We can only get imperfect glimpse, now and 
then, but these supply data sufficient for reason and imagina- 
tion to construct a hypothesis, perhaps a substantial theory, of 
life on a brother planet. traveling, like the earth, in a mighty 
orbit round the sun. 
Astronomical Paradox. 
Here is a little feathery comet, so attenuated that it does 
not dim the lustre of the smallest stars when interposed be- 
tween them and the eye; so inconsiderable in mass that it has 
eluded the attempt of any mathematician to weigh it; so that 
today no astronomer can tell whether the mass of Encke’s 
Comet is to be computed by tens, hundreds, thousands or mil- 
lions of tons, yet this seemingly almost imponderable member 
of our solar system, swinging in an ellipse reaching from 
Mereury to Jupiter, has been successfully employed in weigh- 
ing the masses of those and the intervening planets. 
