Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 61.djvu/396

390 enough be seas and oceans, but here were narrow bands which could hardly pass muster as straits, so long and narrow were the arms thus thrust out into the continents by the seas. Straits, however, Schiaparelli considered them and gave them the name canali, or channels.

How unfamiliar and seemingly impossible the new detail was is best evidenced by the prompt and unanimous disbelief with which it was met.

I have spoken of Dawes as draughting some of these lines; but it must not be supposed that he did more than adumbrate them. It is

possible now to recognize in what Dawes saw, glimpses of something which later Schiaparelli observed, but it would be quite erroneous to imagine such suggestions as in any sense forestalling a view of the things themselves. Perhaps the best proof of such insufficiency is that