The Planet Mars : a Fragment. 187 



nition.* — X. Nov. 26d. 6h. 30m. ; very faint and uncertain. 

 —XI. Nov. 24d. 9h; "Painfully woolly, though the limb 

 is clear/-' — XII. Nov. 24d. lOh. 10m.; somewhat darker 

 and more decided. — XIII. Nov. 22d. 9h. 20m. ; definition 

 very fine ; limb and polar spot very sharp, but spots ill marked 

 and feeble. The planet is growing very small and gibbous. — 

 XIV. Nov. 15d. 7h. 10m. ; transparent sky and pretty good 

 definition, but spots faint and confused. — XV. Oct. 9d. 8h. 

 5m. ; sharp definition, but unequal to fine details. — XVI. 

 Oct. 8d. lOh. 20m. ; the same conditions ; N. edge of long 

 spot very hard and strong across the centre ; spots further S. 

 very faint and ill defined. 



It fortunately happened that the opposition of 1830, so 

 carefully observed by Beer and Madler, and even that of 1832, 

 were combined with a presentation of the axis sufficiently 

 similar to admit of a very fair collation with that of 1862, and 

 consequently eight of their figures, the first six belonging to the 

 former, and the others to the latter epoch, are subjoined at the 

 lower part of the plate, being left untinted to correspond with 

 the originals, but having their axes inclined for the sake of 

 comparison. 



The sides, if a globe can be said to have sides, delineated in my 

 Figs. I. to IV. and XIV. to XVI., I consider the best determined; 

 comprising, I am sorry to add, not much more than a hemi- 

 sphere : the rest is far less satisfactory, depending on fewer draw- 

 ings, and with a greatly reduced diameter and enfeebled aspect ; 

 and of the exact connection between Fig. IX. (or X., which seems 

 to be an imperfect repetition of it, but the only corrobora- 

 tion I have), with VIII. on the one side, and XI. on the other, 

 I am very ignorant : I can only feel assured that there were no 

 great spaces intervening. On the whole, if the distorting effect 

 of rotation performed in oblique spherical per- 

 spective, with the axis inclined about 25|° to the 

 spectator, as shown in this diagram, is duly 

 allowed for, with many other hindrances best 

 known to those who have ever made such an at- 

 tempt, it will be found that this series represents 

 tolerably the chief features of a great part of the 

 S. hemisphere. 



The combination of the whole, however, into one polar pro- 

 jection, a mode of representation first attempted by Sir W. 

 Herschel, and subsequently adopted by Beer and Madler, I 



* The night of a splendid meteor, whose path has been calculated by Mr. 

 Herschel. It was nearly vertical in Loudon, but here low in the E., and not far 

 from Mars, so that I should have seen it to advantage had I not just left the 

 telescope. All I could catch was its train descending towards the horizon; but a 

 person who was with me saw it first ascend a short way and turn over in a narrow 

 parabola. The light was very vivid. 



