MARS

This now-famous planet is somewhat smaller than our earth, being about 5,000 miles in diameter. It travels round the Sun in 686 days, at a mean distance of 140,000,000 miles. The eccentricity of its orbit is considerable. Mars appears to us reddish in color, owing to the vast stretches of arid soil (desert) which exist upon its surface. Water exists, but it is relatively scarce; it is gradually drying-up, as it does in the case of all bodies of the kind—the water on our own earth is very gradually becoming less and less, as the centuries pass.

Mars has been drawn particularly to the public’s attention, of late years, by reason of the dispute (still raging) as to its habitability, and the character of its so-called “canals”—the more or less regular markings, like long, dark lines which have been seen to exist upon its surface. Its surface has accordingly been studied minutely for many years, but it may be said that no unanimity of opinion exists as to its being an inhabited planet. Says Kæmpffert, in his “Astronomy,” (pp. 183-84):

“The mapping of Mars is no recent matter, for even in 1659 a rough sketch of the surface of the planet was made by Huygens, in which the V-shaped markings at the equator, pointing to the north, can be identified as the Syrtis Major. This was followed by rough sketches from time to time down to 1840, when Maedler first began a systematic charting of the planet. His map was followed in 1864 by Kaiser’s, by Flammarion’s in 1876, and Greene’s in 1877. Drawings of various parts of the planet were made during these intervals, but were not combined into good charts.”

“Observations made by Prof. Lowell and his staff at the Observatory, at Flagstaff, Arizona, have had a study of this planet especially in view.... The surface of Mars as seen in the telescope, is composed of two white polar caps, which wane with the approach of summer; orange areas, which are supposed by Lowell to be deserts, and blue-green areas, which change their hue to orange during the Martian autumn and winter, and resume their verdant tint in spring. The planet is covered with a network of fine lines, first discovered by Schiaparelli, in 1877; and called by him ‘canals’—a designation by which they are still known. These canals connect the polar caps with the temperate and equatorial zones. According to Prof. Lowell, they may be regarded as planetary irrigation ditches, which serve the purpose of leading the melting water of the poles to those desert regions which would still blossom, if properly watered. The canals disappear with the approach of winter, and creep down from the poles towards the equator in summer—a phenomenon which long puzzled astronomers, until Pickering ingeniously suggested that we see, not the canals themselves (for they are much too narrow) but the vegetation which fringes their banks—which withers as the cold of winter descends, and which flourishes with the melting of the snows.”

It may be said that this theory of the canals on Mars is not universally accepted by astronomers, but is warmly disputed in some quarters. The markings are undoubted; but some astronomers are inclined to think they are due solely to vegetal growth, and are not the result of human hands. The controversy still continues. Meanwhile, two satellites of Mars were discovered in 1877.