THE PLANET MARS.

Cromwell Argus, Volume XLI, Issue 2211, 5 September 1910, Page 7

THE PLANET MARS.

ITS DEATH-DEALING MONOTONY. We find on Mars day and night even as on our own earth, spring and summer, autumn and winter, snow and ice, rain and dew, soft-blowing breezes, and the ever-changing colours of growing vegetation. So far, Mars is not unlike our earth. But we also find on Mars much that has no counterpart on these shores, much that we should find not only utterly strange, but very, very speedily fatal. To take one simple yet far-reach-ing difference—the diameter of Mars is only a little moi? than one-half that of the earth—namely, 4230 miles ; and tho density of the materials which go to make up this lesser planet is only one-half that of the substances which form our earth. This means that on the surface of Mars the force, the restraining force, of gravity is only one-third what it is with us. But a weakening of the grip of gravity mears a thinning of the atmosphere to a corresponding amount. Thus at the surface of Mars the atmosphere, the Martian atmosphere, is as rare as the atmosphere at the top of our highest mountains. Whether any life under such conditions is possible we dare not say. This we know, that life as we understand it, and conditioned as we experience it, is not possible with an atmosphere so rare as exists on Mars. But the rarity of the Martian atmosphere has a further sequence of results besides this inability to support terrestrial life. There can be little or no evaporation from the surface pools and canals even though water boils on Mars at one hundred degrees Fahrenheit. Thus clouds rarely screen the tortured ground from the sun's heat by day or shelter it from the terrible cold of space by night. This is no indirect deduction. The fact that we can at all times see clearly the surface-mark-ings of Mars is direct proof of the non-existence of clouds. Further, the darker patches on the surface which at one time were held to be seas are now known to be large tracts of vegetation of some kind, so that water, if it exists on mars, is confined to the poles, the strange canals,, and any small streams that may meander through the forest regions. Thus Mars would indeed be a sad and dreary world for any earthdweller to live in. One could dig a grave easily, for the soil there is lighter and shovelling less burdensome than on these shores ; and graves are what would be before us did any of us reach the inhospitable, waterless, windless, cloudless Martian shores. The monotony, also, v/ould be appalling. No mountains have been seen on its level lands, only vast stretches of plain crossed hither and thither by what we children of earth call canals ; though what we would term them were we on Mars is another story. Then there are no restless, health-giving seas ; no flowing, gladdening rivers ; no smiling lakes. The whole view breathes a deathdealing monotony. One feels the stagnation at a distance of 35,000,000 miles.—"Chambers's Journal."