1895.] Anthropology. . 877 
dals have been attentively studied in Central America. Some Indians 
may wear the double toe strap still, but given the existence of the san- 
dal with double toe straps in ancient America, we might reasonably 
suspect that the old Mayas sometimes used the simpler single thong be- 
tween the first and second toes, now so common.—H. C. MERCER. 
Strange Hints for Anthropology.—Schiaparelli, who observed 
in 1877, the markings called canals on Mars, not yet discerned by 
the Government telescope at Washington, still hesitates to call them 
trenches dug by intelligent if not human creatures. Since his obser- 
vations, the existence of the markings has been verified by astronomers 
at Nice, at Arequipa and at Mr. Percival Lowell’s observatory at Flag- 
staff, Arizona, where the air medium is good for seeing, and where many 
more lines have been discerned and named and new phenomena stud- 
ied. The theories advanced and some of the results of Mr. Lowells’ 
original observations have been interestingly summed up by him in 
the Atlantic Monthly for May, June, July and August, 1895. 
Mr. Lowell states the remarkable probabilities to be as follows: 
That the long lines, because straight and regular, are artificial; that 
they are visible because, as Prof. W. H. Pickering first suggested, belts 
of irrigated vegetation about 30 miles wide fringe them and show dark 
against the desert face of the planet; that they fade out in the Mar- 
tian autumn and become visible in the spring because their leaves fall 
off and reappear ; that they are dug straight because no mountains ex- 
ist to obstruct them; that, granted an intelligent water drinking in- 
habitant, they are necessary, because Mars is waterless save for the 
yearly melting of a polar ice cap; that round, oasis-like areas at their 
intersections still further indicate methods of artificial fertilization ; 
that, by our own standards of need, intelligent creatures could exist 
on Mars because Mars has an atmosphere and that owing to a less hos- 
tile gravity its inhabitants might perform more work at less pains than 
we do. 
Meanwhile the investigation of what appears to be the handiwork of 
a Martian intelligence must excite wide interest. As yet no explan- 
ation is offered for the strange fact that sometimes certain canals show 
double. And there are other doubts. Distant trees on the earth do 
not always lose color. The Yucatan forest, where I have seen it from 
hilltops, had a distinct dark blue appearance to the naked eye in Feb- 
ruary and March, though, to a great extent, leafless, and we are left to 
wonder what light observations of the ocular effect of patches of 
