Natural Science News. 



L.I ALBION, N. Y., AUGUST 24, 1895. No. 30 



Sfatural Science News, 



Weekly Journal Devoted to 

 Natural History . 



ANK H. LATTIN, Editor and Publisher, 

 ALBION, N. Y. 



Correspondence and items of Interest to the 

 udent of any of the various branchy of the 

 atural Sciences solicited from all. 



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ntered at Albion 1'. O. as '2nd lass m-'il matter 



Mars. 



The last of Percival Lowell's 

 tapers on Mars appears in the 

 August Atlantic. He treats of the 

 ubject of Oases. In conclusion 

 te says: — 



To review, now, the chain of 

 easoning" by which we have been 

 ed to regard it probable that upon 

 he surface of Mars we see the ef- 

 ects of local intelligence: we find, 

 n the first place, that the broad 

 physical conditions of the planet 

 ire not antagonistic to some form 

 }f life; secondly, that there is an 

 ipparent dearth of water upon the 

 planet's surface, and therefore, if 

 oeings of sufficient intelligence in- 

 habited it, they would have to re- 

 sort to irrigation to support life; 

 thirdly, that there turns out to be 

 a network of markings covering 

 the disc precisely counterparting 

 what a system of irregation would 

 look like; and, lastly, that there is 

 a set of spots placed where we 

 should expect to find the lands 

 thus artifically fertilized, and be- 

 having as such constructed oases 

 should. All this, of course may be 

 a set of coincidences, signifying 

 Hnothing; but the probability seems 

 [the other way. As to details of 

 explanation, any we may adopt 

 flwill undoubtedly be found, on 

 ( closer acquaintance, to vary from 

 ' the actual Martian state of things; 

 for any Martian life must differ 

 1 markedly from our own. 



The fundamental fact in the 

 j matter is the dearth of water. If 

 jwe keep this in mind, we shall see 



that many of the objections that 

 spontaneously arise answer them- 

 selves. The supposed Herculean 

 task of constructing such canals 

 disappears at once; for if the ca- 

 nals be dug for irrigation purposes, 

 it is evident that what we see and 

 call, by ellipsis, the canal is not 

 really the canal at all, but the strip 

 of fertilized land bordering it, — 

 the thread of water in the midst of 

 it, the canal itself, being far too 

 small to be perceptible. In the 

 case of an irrigation canal seen at 

 a distance, it is always the strip of 

 verdure, not the canal, that is vis- 

 ible, as we see in looking from afar 

 upon irrigated country on the 

 earth. 



Startling as the outcome of these 

 observations may appear at first, 

 in truth there is nothing startling 

 about it whatever. Such possibil- 

 ity has been quite on the cards 

 ever since the existence of Mars 

 itself was recognized by the Chal- 

 dean shepherds, or whoever the 

 still more primeval astronomers 

 ma} r have been. Its strangeness 

 is a purely subjective phenomenon, 

 arising from the instinctive reluct- 

 ance of man to admit the possibil- 

 ity of peers. Such would be com- 

 ic were it not the inevitable conse- 

 quence of the constitution of the 

 universe. To be shy of anything 

 resembling himself is part and par- 

 cel of man's own individuality. 

 Like the savage who fears nothing 

 so much as a strange man, like 

 Crusoe who grows pale at the sight 

 of footprints not his own, the civ- 

 ilized thinker instinctively turns 

 from the thought of mind of other 

 than the one he himself knows. 

 To admit into his conception of 

 the cosmos other finite minds as 

 factors has in it something of the 

 wierd. Any hypothesis to ex- 

 plain the facts, no matter how im- 

 probable or even palpably absurd 

 it be, is better than this. Snow- 

 caps of solid carbonic acid gas, a 

 planet cracked in a positively 

 monomaniacal manner, meteors 

 ploughing tracks across its surface 

 with such mathematical precision 

 that they must have been educated 

 to the performance, and so forth 

 and so on, in hypotheses each 

 more astounding than its predeces- 

 sor, commend themselves to man, 

 if on!}- by such means he may es- 

 cape the admission of anything 

 approaching his kind. Surely all 

 this is puerile, and should be out- 

 grown as speedly as possible. It 



is simply an instinct like any other, 

 the projection of the instinct of 

 self-preservation. We ought, 

 therefore, to rise above it, and, 

 where probability points to other 

 things, boldly accept the fact pro- 

 visionally, as we should the pres- 

 ence of oxygen, or iron, or any- 

 thing else. Let us not cheat our- 

 selves with words. Conservatism 

 sounds finely, and covers an}' 

 amount of ignorance and fear. 



We must be just as careful not 

 to run to the other extreme, and 

 draw deductions of purely local 

 outgrowth. To talk of Martian 

 beings is not to mean Martian men. 

 Just as the probabilities point to 

 the one, so do the}' point away 

 from the other. Even on this 

 earth man is of the nature of an 

 accident. He is the survival of by 

 no means the highest physical or- 

 ganism. He is not even a high 

 form of mammal. Mind has been 

 his making. For aught we can 

 see, some lizard or batrachian 

 might just as well have popped in- 

 to his place in the race, and been 

 now the dominant creature of this 

 earth. Under different physical 

 circumstances he would have been 

 certain to do so. Amid the physi- 

 cal surroundings that exist on 

 Mars, we may be practically sure 

 other organisms have been evolved 

 which would strike us as exquisite- 

 ly grotesque. What manner of 

 beings they may be we have no 

 data to conceive. 



How diverse, however, they 

 doubtless are from us will appear 

 from such definite deduction as we 

 are able to make from the physical 

 difference between Mars and our 

 earth. For example, the mere 

 difference of gravity on the sur- 

 face of the two planets is much 

 more far-reaching in its effects 

 than might at first be thought. 

 Gravity on the surface of Mars is 

 only a little more than one third 

 what it is on the surface of the 

 earth. This would work in two 

 ways to very different conditions 

 of existence from those to which 

 we are accustomed. To begin 

 with, three times as much work, as 

 for example in digging a canal, 

 could be done by the same expen- 

 diture of muscular force. If we 

 were transported to Mars, we 

 should be pleasingly surprised to 

 find all our manual labor suddenly 

 lightened threefold. But, indi- 

 rectly, there might result a yet 

 greater gain to our capabilities; 



