Are There Men on Mars?

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 7, 16 February 1907, Page 42

Are There Men on Mars?

A NEW STUDY OF ITS CANALS. When Schiaparelli first drew the canals he saw on Mars, the world said: “These are the works of sentiment beings.'’ But gradually doubts were thrown on the reality of the markings. Walter Maunder placed circles, with a few dots to represent the thief seas of Mars, before schoolboys, and told them to draw what they saw. They drew double canals joining the seas! Ergo—the canals are . optical illusions, said -Maunder. The tendency is to run one's eves from black spot to black spot, and imagine lines between. But this’year Professor Lowell settled the question by actually photographing the canals. The sensitive plate tells what is there, and has no imagination. . The question being raised once again, a book, just out, by Mr. Edward S, Morse, is of more than ordinary interest. For he takes up the question from a new aspect. Briefly, he discusses the character of cracks. He has diagrams to illustrate the difference between lines drawn by Nature and those made artificially. He says: “In order to pronounce the lines on Mars ’as simply craeks, one should study the various kinds of craeks in similar’surfaces on the earth. In such a study he would be amazed at the similarity of cracks. When there is a grain in the substance, as in wood, the craeks ‘-follow -the ’grain, though' even in this' material they are discontinuous. In amorphous material they have essentially the same character.’ Whether in the almost microscopic crack of old Satsuma pottery or huge, cracks in sun-dried mud, the areas enclosed are generally polygonal. “Cracks arising from contraction never converge to a common centre, and when not connected with another erack I hey taper to a point. They begin at indefinite places and end in an equally indefinite manner. That there should lie a common resemblance in cracks due to contraction is evident, as they arise from a shrinking of the surface. “The most ancient deposits, millions of ages ago. reveal imid craeks differing in' no respect from tho-.e found to-day. The cracks in the moon are identical in character to.those found on the mesa in Arizona. They start from some in-

definite point, are irregular in outline, and end as indefinitely. A poor asphalt pavement offers vine of, ( tjie best opportunities for the study of the formation of various kinds of track* and fissures. On the edge Of a sloping sidewalk one may see the craeks du'c'td a sliding or lateral displacement, of the surface. The effects of sulisideiiee shtAv a- number of t racks around tile area: of depression. The growth of a trey tf'pwding the asphalt shows the effect .of lateral and an enlargement > -of a root, below, or the effects of frost slfow cracks 'dibs to elevation. “AH these ,vi)Hops' cracks, reveal , tlie same features} they are discontinuous, they begin and end without definition.

Schiaparelli says in regard to the canali of Mars: 'None of them have yet -been seen cut off in the middle of the continent, remaining without lieginning or without end.’ These lines on the-sur-face of Mars, as a writer in ‘Nature’ says, are almost without exception geodetically straight, supernaturnlly so, and this in spite of their leading in every possible direction. “But if we admit them to be natural cracks in the crust, we are compelled to admit that the forces implicated in such craeks must have been active many

millions <5l years ago, as Mars, being ■ much older planet'than the earth," must have Jong since;eeased to show those activities which tlie earth, even to-ddy, exhibits in such phenomena as earthquakes, subsidences, elevations, and the like. Now, cracks made at that earlytime in. the history of the plauet -must have long since become filled with detritus and obliterated in other ways, and no evidence would show, even ou close inspection, of their former existence, much less at a distance of 50,000,000 of miles, more or less.” .