HARD WICKE 1 S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



156 



exceptions, real or apparent, to these laws. These 

 exceptions are of two kinds. Of the first kind the 

 only example I am aware of is Coloe Marsh. This 

 is situated in N. latitude 45°, hence if it was vegeta- 

 tion we would expect it to be large'" and dark in the 

 summer, small and nearly invisible in autumn and 

 winter ; as a matter of fact, the reverse is the case ; 

 the spot is invisible in the summer, and only large 

 and conspicuous in autumn and winter. In the 

 exceptions of the second kind I place spots which 

 follow the general law, but do not always appear at 

 the proper season ; these are more numerous ; the 

 best example I can give is Lake Tithonius. 



To enable those who may be interested in this 

 subject to verify or check these conclusions, I will 

 briefly explain the construction of the calendar. I 

 divide the Martian year into twelve months, roughly 

 equivalent to our own. Owing to the great eccen- 

 tricity of the orbit, the lengths of these months are 

 very unequal. I reckon in terrestrial days, as being 

 much more convenient when dates have to be trans- 

 ferred from the terrestrial to the Martian calendar. 

 I take the year to begin when the planet is (approxi- 

 mately) in Heliocentric longitude o°, and for the 

 lengths of the months, expressed in terrestrial days, 

 49. 53. 58, 63, 71, 66, 63, 60, 58, 52, 46, 48. In 

 this way the months are nearly equivalent to our 

 own, and I call them by the same names. They are 

 not strictly equivalent ; thus the Martian "January " 

 about corresponds to 25th December to 24th January, 

 but this can be remembered and allowed for. For 

 the N. hemisphere, the dates of the solstices and 

 equinoxes are, V.E. March 52, S.S. June 59, 

 A.E. September 52, W.S. December 42. I do 

 not give the calendar itself, as the work of drawing it 

 up is purely mechanical. An example of its use will 

 be sufficient. 



On the 21st January, 1882, the Euphrates and 

 Phison were seen of a reddish-brown colour by 

 Schiaparelli (Flammarion, p. 358) ; by the calendar 

 we see that this was the 37th April of the Martian 

 year. This about corresponds to the 13th or 14th 

 April of our calendar, when vegetation in northern 

 latitudes ought to be of a reddish-brown colour. 

 Hence this observation (chosen at random) is con- 

 formable to our expectations. In conclusion I have 

 a suggestion to make ; if these dark markings are 

 really vegetation, this vegetation resembles our own 

 in so many respects, that it does not seem unreason- 

 able to suppose that it may resemble our own also in 

 owing its colour to chlorophyll. 



Now, there is a scientific toy called the erythro- 

 scope, described in Rood's "Modem Chromatics," 

 p. S3. (International Scientific Series, vol. xxvii.) 

 The principle of this instrument is, that when a land- 

 scape is viewed through a piece of yellow glass, com- 

 bined with one of blue, both of special tints, the 

 colours of inanimate natural objects are not very 

 much altered, while plants appear of a bright red. 



If pieces of glass of the proper tints were placed 

 before the eyepiece of the telescope, it is possible that 

 dark imarkings due to vegetation would assume a 

 ruddy tint, while the seas and lakes would appear 

 unaltered ; the experiment would probably fail, but 

 it might succeed, and any way is worth trying. Of 

 course, in order that there should be a chance of 

 success, the experiment should be tried at a proper 

 time of the Martian year ; thus the next opposition 

 would not be at a good time ; no success could be 

 expected for any of the markings in the N. hemi- 

 sphere ; a month or so before the opposition the 

 experiment might be successful for some of the 

 markings in the S. hemisphere, as Terby Sea and its 

 affluents. 



J. R. Holt. 



THE ROSE. 



THE rose is always considered the queen of 

 flowers, both from its beauty of form and 

 colour, and also from its delicious scent. In mytho- 

 logy, it is one of the flowers sacred to Venus, in 

 fact, that goddess is supposed to have given birth to 

 it. The story runs : — She was running through the 

 woods in despair for the loss of Adonis, when she trod 

 upon a thorn, which wounded her foot, and the blood 

 which flowed from the wound to the ground, gave birth 

 to the rose. Surely that must have been a red one, and 

 yet there are some old Greek stories, which lead us 

 to suppose that the white ones were the first to come 

 into existence, and our poet Herrick'thus accounts for 

 the white ones changing to red — 



'"Tis said as Cupid danced among 

 The gods, he down the nectar flung, 

 Which, on the white rose being shed, 

 Made it for ever after red." 



However they came into existence, we have now 

 not only the white and the red rose, but also a yellow 

 one ; the latter must be of much later origin than the 

 two former, because in any old stories one may pick up 

 about the flower, it is only the white and the red that 

 are ever mentioned. The name " rose" itself denotes 

 a red colour; it comes from the Celtic " rhos," or 

 "ros" in modern Gaelic, whence probably was 

 derived rhodd, red ; also the Greek name for a rose is 

 p6Sov, and ipvBpds, red. All our numerous garden 

 varieties are really cultivated forms of the wild rose ; 

 they are also made, so to speak, on the same 

 plan, so it will be necessary to understand the 

 structure of the wild rose, and then it will be easy to 

 trace the variations from it in the cultivated plants. 



The rose belongs to the botanical family named 

 Rosacea? ; many of our fruit-trees — the apple, pear, 

 and cherry — belong to the same family, also our 

 bramble-bushes, and our thorn-tree ; besides many 

 smaller plants with which we are very familiar, such 

 as the potentilla, the strawberry plant, the lady's 

 mantle andavens. 



