THE PEOPLE OF MARS.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXXVI, Issue 10106, 25 March 1909, Page 4

THE PEOPLE OF MARS.

A dying race in a desert world —a race spurred on by the terror of hunger and thirst to' stupendous but hopeless efforts to avert the doom which it sees- approaching. Such, summed: up in brief, is Professor Lowell's account of the Martians in his latest and most fascinating study of the mysterious planet—"Mars as the Abode of Life." That life exists on Mars will no longer be doubted by any but born sceptics in the face o£ the evidence which lie marshals once more with all his accustomed skill. • The storm of incredulity which greeted Schiaparelli's discovery of tho extraordinary marks on Mars, now moro than twenty years ago, has passed. Tho doubters- who professed to see in those marks some optical illusion, some mistake of the observer, have been confuted by the unerring eye of the camera. Photographs have proved - beyond peradvanture that tho marks are 'there. The so-called "canals" exist, and are not a mere figment of the brain of man. But now that the objective reality of the "canals" is admitted, other doubters have arisen who affirm that no water exists on Mars, that the caps on the poles of the planet, which look to the terrestrial observer like snow or ice, are really liquefied carbonic acid gas, and that the climate of Mars is far too cold to support life. Such critics would ascribe the canals to some natural cause, such as produces the straight linos in crystals. Once more photography has come to the aid; of Professor Lowell. Last year photographs were at hist taken, showing that water vapor does exist in the spectrum ot' the atmosphere- of Mars. If there is water vapor, the carbonic acid gas theory becomes almost untenable, as also the theory that the cold is too great to support life. Moreover, the inciting of the polar caps on Mill's is accompanied by phenomena which are quite inexplicable if the white substance is carbonic gas, but obvious if itis snow- or ice. It seems, then, that Professor Lowell has seen with the eye of genius and prophecy. Experience and further observation are confirming his original conclusion that living beings can exist on Mars. And if there are living beings—intelligent beings—it is by the effect of intelligence on nature that mind should speak to mind across the almost inconceivable abysses of space. By traces of artificial work on the surface of Mars man should recognise companions in the universe. The planet is peculiarly favorable to the execution of such works. It has no mountains ; that is now admitted by all the astronomers. Its surf ti.ee is monotonous and level. It has no seas; they have long since vanished. From its small Gize and its lessened gravitntive force seven 'times as much work could be performed on Mars with the same amount of labor as on the earth. We should then, a priori, expect the works of reasoning beings on Mais to be on. seven times the scale of those on the earth, even were there not the stimulus of fear t-o rouse the Martians to desperate exertions. If the Martians possess telescopes of incomparable power—and it is quite possible that they have outdistanced our early achievements —they would descry in the meaning of the earth the clear signs of the -presence of man. Decade after decade they would watch the disappearance of the forests, the change in the color of the earth, the agglomeration of the dark-eloud-eovered spots, which are cities, the advance of belts of green in the irrigated districts of India and Egypt; and they might even catch a glimpse of a network of fine lines representing roads and railways anil know what they meant. But our puny works on earth are dwarfed by the colossal magnitude of the Martian canals. These stretch for hundreds, or even thousands of miles with perfect mathematical straightness. 'I bey form geometrical patterns, which instantly anil insistently suggest that tlicy are the . handwork of reasoning beings, to whom all the secrets of our engineering and mathematics are open, and who have bridled forces never yet harnessed on earth.

And why were the canals mado? Professor Lowell answers liv studying I lie planet and comparing its phenomena with those of earth: Mary is older in its evolution than tho oartli. and has cooled more quickly. " All planets, ati they advance in a:re. are doomed to lose their water.' .Some of it will descend into the interior as this oooln, and bo lost forever to the surface. The rest of it will be slowly lost and dissipated into space, until a dead and -waterless sphere spins on its orbit. . Mars is a planet in which water is becoming scarcer and scarcer. It is drying np wider our very eves. Th-e greater part of it shows to the powerful telescope as an ochre or reddish expanse. Ochre or red is the color of deserts tn earth. • "Beautiful as the opaline tints of the planet look, down the far vista ol the telescope tube, they represent a really terrible re.dity. To the bodily eyo Hie aspect of the disc is lovely beyond cornpare ; but to the mind's eye its import is horrible. That rose-ochre enchantment is but a mild mirage. A vast expanse of arid ground, world-wide in .its extent, girdling the planet completely in circumference, and stretching sn places almost from pole to pole, is what these opaline olamors signify. . . • But this very color, unchanging' in its hue, means the extinction of life. Pitilessly persistent, the opal here bears out its attributed sinister intent." . Five-eighths of. liars is an arid waste, unrelieved .from sterility by surface moisture or covering of cloud. "Have itself, it is pitilessly held up to a brazen mm, unprotected by any shield of shade." But. the extraordinary interest of the spectacle which meets the gaze of the astronomer is that it is profiguration of the fate of the earth. It is as though he were caught up in the time machine of Mr •Wells and whirled, forward almost- inconceivable ages. For the earth, too, is drying up. though more slowly. "With steady, if stealthy stride, Saharas are even now possessing themselves of its surface. The outcome is doubtless yet far off, but it is as fatalistically. sure as that to-morrow's sun ■will rise, unless some other catastrophe anticipate our end. It is perhaps not pleasing to learn the manner of our death. But science is concerned only with the fact, and Mars we have to thank for its presentment." Within historic. times water on the earth has become scarcer. On the littoral of jSTorth Africa can still be seen, tha ruins which waxed and waned in Roman times. Aqueducts lead • from them to a point where now no water rises or flows that could fill their conduits. _ In the desert regions of Egypt and Arizona are found' the fossil' remains of forests where the pitiless climate would to-day support no vegetation. The disanpearanco of water has been gradually proceeding on Mars, as it is gradually proceeding on the earth, only in Mara it lias advanced niuch further. And so, as Professor Lowell suggests, the Martian canals 1 must liavo advanced by stages. They may in the first instance have been comparatively small, and have been slowly extended as the precious fluid grew more and' more difficult to obtain. Wo have their prototypfe in the great works which supply our large cities, though these are utterly insignificant- beside anything in Mars. Only a race of great intellect, developing with the menace ."f nature to its existence,, could, have surmounted the .growing difficulties ; yet, after all, the reasoning animal progresses by dominating its surroundings to a .greater and ever greater degree. But the struggle "with environment must be drawing to near the limit in, Mars, and the last resources of ingenuity have been invoked in the struggle with tile inexorable conditions of the universe. , It is Professor Lowell's belief that in a measure of time which is nothing compared with the ages of cosmic development the Martian battle will end in defeat. "To our eventual descendants life on Mars will no longer be- something to scan and interpret. It will have lapsed beyond the hope of study or recall. Thus to us it takes on an added glamor from the fact that it has not long to lastFor the process that brought it to its present pass must go on to the bitter end, until the last spark of Martian life goes out. The drying, up of the planet is certain to proceed until its surface can support 110 life at all. . . . When the last ember is thus extinguished', the planet will roll a dead world through 6pace, its evolutionary career forever ended."