Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 88.djvu/220

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��Popular Science Monthly

��themselves to journey to Flagstaff or other well-situated observatories are speedily convinced that the canals are objective realities and not illusions. Un- til 1907 the Flagstaff observatory was the only one devoted to the study of planets and especially equipped and maintained for that purpose. In that year M. Jarry Deloges, at the suggestion of Flammarion, started an investigation of Mars in France and Algeria. The result was an astonishing confirmation of the Flagstaff" observations. So similar are the drawings of the Martian disk made nearly seven thousand miles apart that one set might well be taken for a copy of the other. If any evidence were needed to prove that the canals of Mars are real, it is surely found in the actual photographs which were first made ten years ago at Flagstaff by Mr. Lamp- land of Doctor Lowell's staff, and which have been duplicated over again by others since then. Unfortunately the detail in these pictures is so very fine that they cannot be satisfactorily reproduced in the pages of a magazine such as the Popular Science Monthly.

It must be admitted that it is not ev- eryone who can see the canals. The man who is a successful observer of faint stars may be quite unable to detect fine planetary detail for structural reasons. Moreover, big instruments, especially in high latitudes, are rather a hindrance than a help in observing Mars.

Granting that Doctor Lowell and his followers are right and that Mars is a living world, what manner of beings are these who have dug canals to water their planet? Unfortunately, no ade- quate conception of a Alartian's physical

����appearance can be formed, although Ed- mond Perrier, a French academician, some years ago boldly declared that they must be very tall and very blonde. Ro- mantic guessing is not scientific deduc- tion. Doctor Lowell in one of his earlier works shows that, while we can never hope to draw a picture of a Mar- tian, we can at least deduce something about him because Mars is a small planet. The bigger the planet on which you live, the harder it is for you to move about. A steam crane would be a wel- come assistance in moving your body about on Jupiter. This is due entirely to the enormous gravitational attraction of Jupiter. The bigger the planet the hard- er are you pulled down to its surface. Mars is only one-ninth as massive as the earth. Hence you would weigh much less on Mars than you do on the earth. A Martian porter could easily carry as much as a terrestrial elephant. A Mar- tian baseball player could bat a ball a mile. Because his planet is not able to pull him down with the attractive force that the earth exerts upon us, the typical Martian has conceivably attained a stature that we would regard as gi- gantic. Three times as large as a human being, this creature has muscles twenty- seven times as effective. His trunk must be fashioned to enclose lungs capable of breathing the excessively attenuated Martian air in sufficiently large quanti- ties to sustain life. As a canal digger — assuming that he had no machinery — he would be a great success, because he could excavate a canal with the speed and efffciency of a small Panama steam shovel.

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These drawings of Mars were made under different conditions by observers who knew nothing of each other's activities. And yet the pictures agree in their essential features. Drawing No. 1 was made October 21, 1909, by E. C. Slipher, of Doctor Lowell's staff, at Flagstaff, Arizona; drawing No. 2 was made by Jarry Desloges four thousand miles from Flagstaff on November 13, 1909; drawing No. 3 was made on January 21, 1914, with the Lowell 46-inch reflecting telescope, a magnifying power of 365 being used; drawing No. 4 made by Mr. Slipher about one hour later on the same night with the same ins- trument and the same magnifying power, shows the same important features

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