WHAT IS GOING ON IN MARS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9172, 29 September 1888, Page 2 (Supplement)

WHAT IS GOING ON IN MARS.

One of the latest articles written by Mr. R. Proctor appears in the New York World. Is is entitled as above, and refers to recent uppearances in the planet Mars. We make the following extracts : — Mars is shining resplendently in our skies and a hundred telescopes of splendid powers ere available for the work of studying his ruddy face, " to discern rivers or mountains on this spotted globe." The idea that Mars is a miniature world had been steadily growing in • probability and general favour, when suddenly Schiaparelli, the eminent director of the Milan Observatory (would that all official astronomers had his zeal !). announced that he had recognised multitudinous canals on the planet, averaging twenty miles or so in width and a thousand miles or so in length. As if that were not enough, he followed up the discovery by another, which suggested that the Martian engineers are not only enterprising, but resolute and rapid in carrying out their enterprises. He announced that alongside nearly all the canals he had discovered in 1879, another set had been constructed bv the spring of 18S0. (He had detected the first of the duplicate eet at the end of 1879). N\ hen I say that the second set of canals were alongside the ether set, 1 mean that they ran parallel to them, at a mean distance of about threehundred miles. Imagine what all this, if real, would mean. But this is not all: These "double Canals," as the over-cautious maintainers of the doctrine that "seeinsr is believing already called them, would seem to have proved unsatisfactory to the Martian engineers ; for though they were seen in 18J>4 or three months, they disappeared one lifter another, till none were left—that is, the second canal or " double " disappeared, leaving only the original set. It was as though rival canal companies on Mars had Started competing sets of canals, striving perhaps to get up some trust system which might destroy the holders oi the old canal system, but had failed in the contest and had had their whole series of duplicate ■canals confiscated and afterwards rilled up. But. if so, they either recovered their financial position or were l eplaced by others, for the duplicate canals reappeared in 1880, only to disappear after a few months, and, strangely enough, in 1886 as in 1881 the F-eeond set of canals disappeared just at the time when one would have thought that on a cold planet like Mars travelling by canal would be most enjoyable—namely, about the time of Martian midsummer for the regions where the canals are seen ! Another theory might be suggested as on the whole more probable than the canal theorythough perhaps that is not saying much. How if we suppose the Martialists are trying to attract our attention with their j network of broad streaks, their reduplicated j strokes, and so forth ? What if, rinding us j irresponsive to their first series of signals, they have thought it desirable to wipe them oil their red-board and presently make a new series? "Surely," we can imagine them saying, " if there are inhabitants on that lovely star of morning and evening in which our philosophers take so much interest, they must have sense enough to know that we are not making strokes on onr world a thousand miles long and twenty miles broad for nothing : they ought to see "that we want- to communicate with them, and unless we suppose (which is, of course, utterly incredible) that they are more interested in eating, and drinking, marrying, and giving in marriage, or even in fighting amongst each other, than in the soul-stir-ring "study of philosophy, we may fairly expect that- they will attend to our signals, learn to understand them, and then strive to respond to them as clearly as from their unfortunately inferior position (whichcauses them to be invisible to us just when they are nearest) it may be possible for them to do," And so the Martialists would continue to mark their planet with broad stripes for our edification, wiping them out and marking them in again, until we had found sense and courtesy enough to respond to them. Whatever the dark streaks may be, I reasoned, they cannot possibly be double canal*. Whatever the cause of the changes affecting them, they cannot be due to Martian engineering operations. It would be monstrous. I argued (in my incautious way), to imagine such operations on a planet whose chances in the evolution of life would certainly not lend themselves to the development of creatures so far surpassing man in engineering daring and capacity. On the other hand, it does seem conceivable —nay. it even seems likely—that rivers which at times, perhaps usually, would look like dark streaks on Mars would at times look like bright streaks, while at other times perhaps these streaks would disappear altogether.

What if a whole Martian continent, rivers and all, became enshrouded in clouds ? I Would not the rivers then be altogether in j risible —as utterly invisible as our rivers i would be to an aeronaut high above a dense j layer of impenetrable cloud? What if at other j times, though the clouds cleared away from i a whole continent, they still remained above the rivers, changing them for the observer on earth into streaks of cloud-like light, because the clouds along those riverbeds would turn " their silver linings" towards the observer on earth ? It is so utterly wild and fanciful to adopt the idea (rejecting even those exceedingly probable Martian canals, duplicate and otherwise) that what happens on our earth, with her feas, continents, and rivers, might happen on a planet which visibly has seas and continents and in whose air clouds visibly gather and clear away or discharge their waters in rain, so that we may not unsafely suspect that the planet has rivers also ? THE EFFECT OF CLOUDS. If we thus daringly imagine resemblance between the condition of Mars and that of a planet in some stage of its life not utterly unlike our earth, instead of assuming more cautiously the construction (in a year or two) of canals thousands of miles long and twenty miles or so wide, we are led to imagine also something akin to terrestrial conditions. We picture clouds covering the Martian continents in the daytime ; we imagine a clearing away of the clouds everywhere except along the river tracks in the spring, and finally the clearing away of the clouds even over the river tracks in the summer time. I feel regretful that all this is so little in accordance with the Gargantual canal-making, but the readers <st the World must forgive me if rash daring presents to my incautious mind ■Seas, rivers, clouds and so forth as on the whole more probable than canals many hundreds of miles long where canals would be utterly useless, and twenty miles wide where (it should seem) a quarter of a mile of width would have satisfied all imaginable Martian requirements. The Martian winter would be the time of general overclouding, the Martian spring being the time for the clearing away of clouds everywhere save along the river tracks, and Martian midsummer the time when the clouds would clear away altogether and the rivers appear with their natural darkness of tint. As if to encourage my rashness in rejecting the immense, yet ever changing, Martian canals, and preferring the thought that there may be rivers on a planet which has seas and continents, clouds and snows, and other characteristics akin to those of our own earth. Mars himself reports precisely such changes as we should expect were my overbold speculation sound. Schiaparelli, the original discoverer of the canals and. of their duplicates, first also to suggest the theory which M. Perrotin, of • Nice, has recently advocated, points out in his report on his Martian studies that the- dark streaks visible singly in the Martian summer and invisible in the Martian winter are doubled in the Martian spring. As spring advances and the summer solstice approaches, the double streaks become one after another single, until finally, at midsummer, every one of them has lost its companion streak. It does not seem to have occurred to him, In making or in recording these observations, that the disappearance of a companion canal a thousand miles long and twenty Wiles wide in a few weeks would suggest a destructive energy 011 the part of Martian engineers even more wonderful than the energy displayed in cutting the canals. With exemplary caution he and Perrotin and other believers in Martian canals adhere to their faith in what their " very own eyes" have seen. It is only I, wildly and fancifully speculative, whosuggestthat their canals are but the products of optical illusion, and that Mars has rivers as the earth has.