Page:The evolution of worlds - Lowell.djvu/98

72 yearless planet, it is better to look at than to look from; but its study opens our eyes to the great diversity which even one of our nearest neighbors exhibits from what we take as matters of course on Earth.

That what we take offhand to be purely astronomic phenomena should turn out to be so essentially of the particular world, worldly, clarifies vision of what these really are, and how dependent on and interwoven with everyday life astronomy is. Or, we may consider it turned about and realize how purely astronomic relations, such abstract mechanical matters as rotations and revolutions, result in completely changing the very face and character of the globe concerned. Mercury to-day stares forever at the Sun. The markings we see have stereotyped this stare to its inevitable result. For they seem to mark a globe sun-cracked. At such a condition the curious crisscross of dark, irregular lines certainly hints, accentuated and perfected as it is by a bounding curve where the mean sunward side terminates to the enclosing them as by the carapace of a tortoise. Though they cannot probably be actual cracks, however much they may resemble such, yet they may well owe their existence to that fundamental cause.

In color the planet is ghastly white; of that wan hue that suggests a body from which all life has fled. Far whiter than Venus in point of fact, the rosy tint