Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 70.djvu/468

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HAT fascinating mystery, the planet Mars, will again approach the earth this summer. Again the nightly watcher will note the diminishing snow caps at the poles, the dark areas of vegetation, enlarging with the welcome moisture, and, perchance a cloud or two that, lingering over the cold Martian night, is dissipated in the sunrise heat, revealing thus its character.

Again also will hundreds of fine dark lines appear, which from their straightness and artificial appearance, seem to attest the existence of highly intelligent beings upon our neighbor.

It is right and natural that we should first regard these faintest of markings as realities upon the planet. The writer can certify to their apparent genuineness, for he has pictured numbers of them in half a dozen favorable oppositions since 1892. To him they were real until time proved that in the faintest markings astronomers failed of satisfactory agreement. In the larger markings, and even in the larger canals, conflicts of evidence do occur, but are never troublesome. One may confidently say that such realities do exist. But with the very faint canals whose numbers reach occasionally well into the hundreds, discordance reigns supreme, and it is frequently found that different drawings by the same artist antagonize each other across the page.

Considerations along these lines led the writer to study seriously the origin of these inconsistent faint canals by the methods of experimental psychology, and the application of those methods has resulted in a new optical illusion and new adaptations of old and well-known phenomena, all of which apply profoundly to the case in hand. Their description and application follow.

The most important of these phenomena is the halo.

To observe this, place Fig. 1 at a distance of six to eight feet from the eye and look at it from time to time, taking care to avoid fatigue. Around it will appear a whitish area limited externally by a faint dark line forming a perfect circle, as if traced by a pair of compasses. This external ring or secondary image has a sensible width and appears blackest on its sharp inner edge. When once caught, which is usually