THE QUAETEELY 



JOURNAL OF SCIENCE. 



JULY, 1865. 



ORICINAL ARTICLES. 



THE PLANET MARS. 

 By John Phillips, M.A., Oxon. ; LL.D., Dublin ; F.R.S. 



The ideas formed of the heavenly bodies and the spaces in which they 

 move, or seem to move, change from age to age, with the improvement 

 of the means of observation, and from region to region, according to 

 clearness of sky, advantageous situation, and favourable climate. 

 Among all people, and in every age, the two great lights of heaven, 

 the giver of day and the ruler of night, have been honoured, if not 

 worshipped, as glorious emblems of the infinite power which governs 

 the phases of Nature, " constant in her ceaseless change." The " starry 

 host," contemplated by shepherds who watched their flocks by night 

 on the plains of the East, very soon parted itself into the lights which 

 seemed to be fixed and immovable in the blue revolving dome, and the 

 " planets," or wanderers, which moved among the rest, and sometimes 

 retraced their steps. To these also, as emblems of a guiding power, 

 honour and worship were addressed ; sacred names were given to 

 them — days were named after them ; and our Christian week preserves 

 the titles of an earlier and alien creed. 



The early Greek pilot who lifted anchor and set sail in the even- 

 ing—as when Odysseus quits the shores of Phseacia, or his son leaves 

 Ithaca for the mainland — turned for guidance to the stars which 

 circled round the pole. Sitting sleepless by the rudder he observed the 

 Pleiads and Bootes late sinking in the west, and the Bear who, con- 

 tinually revolving, watches Orion, without ever touching the sea.* 

 The five planets observed were soon distinguished into those of longer 

 and shorter periods ; Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Mercury ; and to 

 them the mystical relation was adapted which represented the slowest of 

 the planets as the oldest and dullest, and gave to the quickest the name 



* ' Odyssey,' lib. v. 271. 

 VOL. II. 2 D 



