MARS

AS

THE ABODE OF LIFE

BY

PERCIVAL LOWELL, A.B., LL.D.

AUTHOR OF "MARS AND ITS CANaLS," ETC.

director of the observatory at flagstaff, arizona; non-resident professor of astronomy at the massachusetts institute of technology; fellow of the american academy of arts and sciences: membre de la soc1ete astronomique de france: member of the astronomical and astro- physical society of america: mitglied der astronomische ge- sellschaft; membre db la societe belge d'astronomie; honorary member of the sociedad astronomica de mex

ico; janssen medalist of the societe astronomique de france, mm, for researches on mars; etc., etc.

ILLUSTRATED

3?efa gorit

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

1908

All rights reserved
Copyright, 1908,

Bv THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up and electrotyped. Published December, 1908.

371220

,.,.;«.

NortoooB jirraa J. 8. Gushing Co. — Berwick & Smith Co.

Norwood, Mass., U.8.a.

JkflCROFILM AVAILABLE
MY BROTHER

PROFESSOR ABBOTT LAWRENCE LOWELL, LL.D.

WHO AS TRUSTEE OF THE LOWELL INSTITUTE

PROPOSED THESE LECTURES

THIS PRESENTATION OF THEM

IS AFFECTIONATELY

INSCRIBED

PREFACE

In 1906 Professor Lowell was asked by the trustee

of the Lowell Institute to deliver a course of lectures

there upon the planet Mars. Eleven years had elapsed

since, at the invitation of the former trustee, he had

done the like. When the time came for their delivery

unusual interest was manifested, the course proving

the most thronged of any ever given before the Insti

tute. So great was the demand for seats that the hall

could not contain the crowd, and the lectures had to

be repeated in the afternoons, to audiences almost as

large.

The eight lectures were then published, with slight

changes, in six papers in the Century Magazine, and

were subsequently wanted by Macmillan and Com

pany for issuance in book form.

Though dealing specifically with Mars, the theme

of the lectures was that of planetary evolution in gen

eral, and this book is thus a presentation of something

which Professor Lowell has long had in mind and of

which his studies of Mars form but a part, the re

search into the genesis and development of what we

call a world ; not the mere aggregating of matter, but

vii
viii PREFACE

what that aggregation inevitably brings forth. The

subject which links the Nebular Hypothesis to the

Darwinian theory, bridging the evolutionary gap be

tween the two, he has called planetology, thus desig

nating the history of the planet's individual career.

It is in this light that Mars is here regarded : how it

came to be what it is and how it came to differ from

the Earth in the process.

The object of the founding of the Observatory at

Flagstaff was the study of the planets of our solar

system ; a subject it has now for fourteen years made

its specialty, the site, chosen for the purpose, en

abling it to prosecute this study to more advantage

than is possible at any other observatory at present.

From the data thus collected, light has been thrown

upon the evolution of the planets as worlds, resulting

in a thesis of which the present book is a preliminary

presentation.

As in all theses, the cogency of the conclusion hangs

upon the validity of each step in the argument. It is

vital that each of these should be based on all that

we know of natural laws and the general principles

underlying them. Their truth can only be adequately

appreciated by those able to follow the physical and

mathematical processes involved, and for this the gen

eral reader has not the necessary technical education.

Yet there are many, professional and unprofessional
PREFACE ix

alike, capable of comprehending provided the steps

are made sufficiently explicit. It has seemed, there

fore, worth the trying to attempt to write for both

classes of the community in a single volume. To do

this, the general text has been printed complete in

itself, while the demonstrations of the several steps

have been collected in a part by themselves with refer

ence to the places in the text where they severally

should occur. All illustrations of the planet Mars

are by Professor Lowell.

May, 1908.
s
CONTENTS

Foreword

rAOE

I

PART I

CHAfTEK

I. The Genesis of a World .... 3

Catastrophic origin ...... 3

Meteorites ....... 4

Meteorite worship ...... 4

Meteoric constitution of solar system . . . 5

Analogy Amount The Substances meteoritesfofvary heat cataclysm gravitate with depends heat to new together, onandthestars pressure massgenerating (Novae) of the body heat 67

8

Mass the fundamental factor .... 9

Cooling ....... 9

Life-history depends on size .... ii

Planetologic eras ..... 1 1

Geologic Present aspects part ofofplanetology the planets .... our guide . 12

•3

Landscape the result of cooling •4

Mountains in proportion to mass 'S

1 Volcanic phenomena .....

Relative roughness of Earth, Moon, and Mars .

16

Mountains absent on Mars .... 16

16

Slant illumination ..... 17

Importance to astronomers .... «7

Applied to Mars ..... 18

Not indicative of mountains .... 21

Two or three thousand feet limit of elevation on Mars 22

XI
xu CONTENTS

Internal Darwinian Confirmed Continental Probableheat comparative theory byandoflunar the oceanic ofthree surface lunr iternal aes bodiesrigin . heat formedof earth and

Theirrue Martian distribution message determined. . .

Their Earth'srelative flooring oceaicsize attests basins o itdifferent permanentplanets .

II. The Evolution of Life

The origin of organic life .

Life an inevitable phase of planetary evolution

Water essential to life ... .

Seas the earliest home of mundane life

Uniformity of paleozoic fossils . .

Carboniferous plant life

Light less and heat more then than now .

Effect on the earth ....

Earth itself responsible for paleozoic heat .

Earth, not sun, the motive force in evolution

paleozoic era .

-~A once cloudy Mars ... .

Life outgrows the sea .

Effect of environment upon evolution

Deep-sea life thought impossible fifty years ago

Extinction of light

Deep-sea life .

Blindness ....

Phosphorescent organs .

Lesson of the fishing fishes

Cosmic character of life

III. The Sun Dominant

Transition Mars

in the

PAGE

23

26

26

27

28

28

3°

3°

32

33

35

35

37

39

42

45

46

48

49

5°

52

52

53

54

57

57

58

60

61

61

64

70

70
CONTENTS xm

The sun asserts itself .

Mars betrays the same evolution

The thin atmosphere of Mars

- - The polar caps of Mars

The question of temperature on Mars

_^-The clear skies of Mars

Summer and winter temperatures .

Aspect of Mars corroborative

-Summer the life season . .

~~Zones of vegetation of the San Francisco Mountains

Summer temperature determinative of life

Plateaux hotter than peaks at a like elevatic

Water-vapor in the air of Mars

Vegetation of Mars

Mode of manifestation of life

7i

73

78

80

83

85

87

89

90

93

95

98

103

106

107

IV. Mars and the Future of the Eabjh

-Mars has lost its oceans

-The oceans of earth are disappearing

Gain of land in North America and Europe

Lowering of the sea-level

Inland seas ....

Terrestriality succeeds terraqueousness

Deserts .....

The petrified forest of Arizona

Egypt and Carthage

Palestine .....

Subtropical regions chiefly affected .

- Planetary change far advanced on Mars

The opaline tints of Mars . .

How the earth will follow Mars

Water present in the Martian atmosphere

The surface of Mars a waterless world

A high type of life probable on Mars

The probability of life on Mars at the present time

1 1 1

112

118

119

121

123

124

126

128

1 29

129

■3'

'34

»35

136

142

142

144
XIV CONTENTS

VI.

The Canals and Oases of Mars . . . .146

Schiaparelli Lines Canals Oses aresuperposed in straight dark . andregions the . over canals .. main ..features.. .. ... .146852 .156

The Search New Width Area canals ofmethod for differs zones clew areofforsubject toresearch . different decipherment to. change doubles . .. . .. .1683701 74

The Quickening Quickening Melting earthfirstasofstarts necessary witnessed canals at polar according onfromcap Marsspace to latitude . . .. .17681759

Speed of spread of vegetation . . . .181

Proofs of Life on Mars . . . . .184

Discovery Review ofofthecelestial natural truths chain similar of evidence to detective . .work .186184

Aspect of Mars corroborates principles of planetary

evolution . . . . . . .186

Canals Animalconfront life disclosed the observer only by . mind . . . .188

Not rivers . . . . . . .191

Not cracks . . . . . . .191

Other natural explanations prove impossible . . 192

Oases equally inexplicable . . . . .194

Artificiality suggests itself . . . . .195

Great-circle character of the canals . . . .196

Circularity of oases . . . . . .197

Its Mars' Notelocomotion ofsurface wateraexplained runs levelthrough surface the. action . .. .. .200199 .7

Gravity incapable of water transference . . .201

Organisms evolve as a planet ages .... 205
CONTENTS XV

CHAPTER

One species supplants all others

To die of thirst .

End foreseen

Further phenomena

Speculation excluded

Our life not unique

Martian life nearing its end

PAGE

206

207

208

21 I

2I4

2I5

216

PART NotesII

1 . On Moment of Momentum ....

2. The Connection of Meteorites with the Solar System

3. The Heat developed by Planetary Contraction

4. The Heights of Mountains on the Moon

5. Heat acquired by the Moon . .

6. Surface Heat of Mars

7. The Boiling-point of Water on Mars .

8. The Paleozoic Sun ....

9. Effect on the Earth of the Supposed Paleozoic Sun

10. On the Influence upon the Climate of Carbon Dioxide in

the Air ....

1 1 . Atmosphere of Mars

12. The Mean Temperature of Mars

13. A Dust Storm on Mars

14. Mars on the Cause of an Ice-age

15. Tidal Effects ....

1 6. On the Visibility of Fine Lines .

17. Canals of Mars

18. Position of the Axis of Mars

Index ......

219

2ZO

225

229

23O

231

232

233

236

238

240

256

265

270

271

279

280

283

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PLATES

I. On the Road to the Observatory Frontispiece

orrosiTK pace

II. Mars — 1905 .......

|llt. Spectrogram of Moon and Mars showing the Watervapor Band ......

IV. Two Photographs of London taken from a Balloon

V. At the Telescope —Observing Artificial Planets

VI. The Lowell Observatory in Mexico . .

VJX. Mars in 1905 ......

VIII. A Chinese Translation of Lowell's " Mars "

74

'38

148

172

208

217

282

CUTS APPEARING IN TEXT

Morehouse Comet .......

Meteorite from Canon Diablo, Arizona (pitted by fusion)

Meteorite from Canon Diablo, Arizona (surface polished)

Cloud Effect on Jupiter .....

FACE

7

10

I ]

12

An Apple shrunk to show the Effect of Contraction

Phasenator View of....... the Moon, Mountainous Surface on the Termi

Phase View of Mars, May, 1907

Dust View Storm of the onEarth Marsfor Proportion ..... of Land and Sea

Two View A PartViews ofofthe Mars theofMoon Moon's apportioning the MarsEarth at forthe FaceComparison asFull, Dark showing seeninfrom andLikeAncient with Light Space Mnner theAreas Sea-bottoms Earth.

•5

19

20

21

22Z

23

26

29

3'
xviii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

Model of a Brontosaurus . . . . . . -35

Plant Life in the Coal Measures —from a Fossil Specimen . 36

Plant Life of the Upper Devonian —from a Fossil Specimen . 3 8

A Trilobite ......... 40

Fossil Footprints of Amphibia ...... 41

Deep-sea Fishes ; Challenger Expedition .... 42

Deep-sea Fish ; Challenger Expedition . . . -59

Deep-sea Angler Fish ; Challenger Expedition ... 62

Deep-sea Fish ; Challenger Expedition .... 63

Two Views of the Solis Lacus Region on Mars, One Hour Apart 76

The North Polar Cap of Mars at its Least Extent ... 79

The Drawing SouthofPolar Mars with Cap ofDarkMarsBeltatgirdling its Greatest SnowExtent during its Melting . . 801

Early Winter Snow Storm in the Northern Hemisphere of Mars 8 2

Merriam's Map of the San Francisco Mountain and Vicinity . 91

The San Francisco Peaks ....... 92

Arizona Desert View . . . . . . -93

The Douglas Fir ........ 94

Vertical Distribution of Climate on Mountains, showing how

Land-masses raise Temperature ..... 98

Diagrammatic Profile of the San Francisco and O'Leary Peaks

from Southwest to Northeast ..... 99

Chart of Effect of Plateau on Tree Zones —Less Elevation . 1 00

Chart of Effect of Plateau on Tree Zones —Greater Elevation 10 1

Diagrams of Two Craters with Axis of Greatest Cold N.N.W. 102

Comparative Sizes of the Earth and Mars with the Polar Caps

of Both in their Springtime . . . . .Ill

Lines in the Dark Areas of Mars, proving that the Latter are

not Seas . . . . . . . .115

Two Views of Mars with Parings on the Terminator . . x 1 6

Map of North America, showing approximately the Area of Dry

Land at the Close of Archaean Time . . . .119

Petrified Forest of Arizona . . . . . .125

Another View of the Petrified Forest of Arizona . . .126

Effect of the Spring Mist around the North Polar Cap of Mars 136
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xix

PAGE

A Section of the Canal Eumenides-Orcus terminating in the

Junction Trivium Charontis . . . . . 1 50

CanalsmerainofDark the Lowell RegionsObservatory connecting bywithwhich the Polar the Canals Cp of. Mars. 153

Ascraeus wereLucus, Photographed from which. radiate . Many . Canals . . .. .1561 54

Single and Double Canals . . . . . .160

A Mass of Double Canals . . . . . 1 60

Time ACartouche Massof ofVegetation ofSingle the Ceraunius Canals on theabout —Earthfrom Lucus —afrom Chart Phoenicis a Chart by Lowell by. Lowell . .174611 80

Sprouting Time of Vegetation on Mars —from a Chart by Lowell 1 82

Luci Ismenii, revealing the Systematic Method in which the

The Moon, Duble showing Canals enter th Straight the TwinWallOases and Rill . to . Right. of Bin.190

Mercury —from — Drawings a Drawingdepicting by Lowell, the Irregular May, 1905Character . . of the. 191

Lines on the Planet differing entirely in Look from those on

Mars . . . . . . . . 193

A Corner of Mars, June 10, 1907 . . . . .195

Arethusa Lucus, April 15, 1903, with Converging Canals from

the North Polar Cap 196

Canals from the South Polar Cap of Mars . . . 197

Djihoun ......... 203

Differentiation of the Ganges ..... . 205

Northeast Corner of Aeria, July 2-5, 1907. . . . 209

The Carets of Mars . . . . . . .212

Mouths of Euphrates and Phison . . . . .213

PART I

PLANETOLOGY
.
MARS AS THE ABODE

OF LIFE

FOREWORD

UP to the middle of the nineteenth century, astron

omy was busied with motions. The wanderings

of the planets in their courses attracted attention, and

held thought to the practical exclusion of all else con

cerning them. It was to problems of this character

that the great names of the past —Newton, Huygens,

Laplace — were linked. But when the century that

has gone was halfway through its course, a change

came over the spirit of the investigation; with the

advance in physics celestial searchers began to con

cern themselves with matter, too. Gravitational as

tronomy had regarded the planets from the point of

view of how they act; physical astronomy is intent

upon what they are.

One outcome of this more intimate acquaintance

is the new study with which the present papers deal :

the evolution of the planets regarded as worlds. Such

research has to do not merely with the aggregation

of material, but with its subsequent metamorphoses

B I
2 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

after it has come together. Planetology we may call

this science of the making of worlds, since it concerns

itself with the life-history of planetary bodies from

their chemically inert beginning to their final inert

end. It constitutes the connecting link in the long

chain of evolution from nebular hypotheses to the

Darwinian theory. It is itself neither the one nor

the other, but takes up the tale where the one leaves

off, and leaves it for the other to continue.
CHAPTER I ..' /,,

THE GENESIS OF A WORLD

SO far as thought may peer into the past, the epic oustrophic of our solar system began with a great catastrophe. rg

Two suns met. What had been, ceased ; what was

to be, arose. Fatal to both progenitors, the event

dated a stupendous cosmic birth.

It is more than likely that one or both of the col

liding masses were dark bodies, dead suns, such as

now circle unseen in space amid the bright ones

we call the stars. Probable this is, for the same

reason that the men who have been far outnumber

the men who are. It is not to be supposed that the

two rovers actually struck, the chances being against

so head-on an encounter ; but the effect was as dis

astrous. Tides raised in each by the approach tore

both to fragments, the ruptured visitant passing on

and leaving a dismembered body behind in lieu of

what had been the other. That the stranger con

tinued on its way is shown by the present moment of

momentum of our system. For it is very small, and

the fact can be proved to mean that after the encoun

ter its matter still lay massed for the most part in a

3
MARS AS THE:-ABODE OF LIFE

Meteorites.

Meteorite

worship.

single centre.1 Thus';, what had been a sun was left

alone, with its", "wreckage strewn about it. Masses

large and. small*' made up its outlying fragments, scat

tered *h/rpu°gh space in its vicinity, while a shattered

nueleu's* did it for core. So, much of its history we

; "-learn from the tiniest of its constituents now: the

-meteorites. To meteorites thus attaches a peculiar

importance ; for they are Rosetta stones for the de

cipherment From timeof what unreckoned, wet before. rocks have fallen out of

the sky upon the Earth. Most of them are of stone,

but some are nearly pure iron, mixed with a small

amount of nickel. They are called meteorites.

Twenty-six known elements have been found to occur

in them, and not one element that is new. They

thus betray a constitution cognate to the Earth's.

In size these visitants vary from the grain-like

bodies known as shooting-stars up to ponderous

masses weighing many tons. Coming from space,

they enter our air at speeds of from' eleven to fortyone miles a second, and friction, due to their great

velocities, fuses their exterior, and eats the holes with

which is pitted what remains of them when they strike

the ground.

Recorded meteoric falls date from a far past, and

were deemed miraculous by early men. A stone that

fell in Phrygia in pristine times was adored as Cybele,
THE GENESIS OF A WORLD 5

" the mother of the gods," and later, about 204 B.C.,

was carted with great ceremony to Rome. The fa

mous Diana of the Ephesianswas probably none other

than a meteoric stone, enshrined and worshipped as

a goddess. Adoration of such arrivals from heaven

was not of local observance only, but common to

peoples over the whole Earth. There was a stone so

worshipped at Mecca, and another in Tatar, Siberia,

to which homage was paid ; while even in our own

country a large mass of iron found in Wichita County,

Texas, was set up as a fetich by the Indians, who re

vered it as a body not of the Earth, but sent to it

by the Great Spirit.

A certain poetic justice invests this worship with a Meteoric grandeur of its own ; for these things are probably the c°'

oldest bits of matter we may ever touch, the material system

from which our whole solar system was fashioned.

They mark the farthest point in its history to which

we can now mount back. The time of day at which

they commonly fall —the afternoon rather than the

morning — points curiously to their oneness with

the rest of the solar system ; for in the afternoon the

Earth looks backward over its traversed path, and

their descent then proves that they follow and over

take it, and therefore that their movement has the

same sense as its own. Still more conclusive of their

relationship to ourselves is the speed with which they

constitution

solar
MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

Analogy of

cataclysm to

new stars

(Novae).

The meteor

ites gravitate

together,

generating

heat.

arrive, or, to be precise, the lack of it. For, did they

come from the depths of space, were they ronins of the

sky owing attraction's allegiance to no one lordly sun,

they would have velocities exceeding forty-five miles a

second, and these should often show, not an instance

of w hich has ever been remarked.2

Just as, chemically and gravitational lv, they stand

confessed our kith and kin, so, physically, they betray

the character of their origin ; for they bear in them

occluded gases, which could have come there only

under great pressure, such as would exist in the inte

rior of a giant sun. Thus they proclaim themselves

clearly fragments of some greater body. To the some

time dismemberment of this orb, from which disinte

gration our sun and planets were formed, the little

solitary Of thebitscataclysm of rock that thus thus mutelyoccurred witness.far down the

otherwise unrecorded vista of time, we have an ana

logue in the Novae that now and then blaze forth in

the sky to-day, startling us from out the depths of

space. These new stars, that suddenly appear, grow

in brightness, and then slowly fade to nebulosity,

speak by such action of a like catastrophe by which

they were born again. Not otherwise was our own

birth heralded in heaven.

Strewn thus about the scene of the encounter, the

pieces of the disrupted sun would begin to gravitate
THE GENESIS OF A WORLD

together. The several subsidiary swarms of these

fragments were of different sizes, but of much the

same substance, because of the general similarity of

their origin.

Cooled by

contact with

the cold of

space, so soon

as the meteor

ites started to

fall together,

they gener

ated heat,

warming one

another, just

as the rubbing

of two sticks

strikes The amount fire. The Morehouse Comet as photographed at the

c . Lowell Observatory, 1908 of heat pro- By e. c. siipher.

duced depended upon the number of particles con

cerned, or, in other words, upon the mass of the body

the particles were busied to form.

Approximately we can compute what this heat would Amount of be. If the body be supposed homogeneous, and to cat , epen s

* r r O * 011 the mass

contract under its own gravity from an original ex- of the body.

tended condition to an eventually compressed state,

 
8 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

the work done, converted into heat, would be propor

tionate to the square of the mass divided by the radius

attained. The same would be the case if the body

were heterogeneous and composed of concentric spher

ical shells, only that the numerical amount would be

greater according to the distribution of the mass.

However the body were constituted, its caloric would

be spread through the mass, and the resulting heat on

each unit of it would therefore be as its mass divided

by its radius. The internal temperature of the par

ticular planet would therefore depend upon the

amount of material that collected together. Thus

each body was subjected to a different heat as well as

to a differing pressure, according to its mass from the

moment it began to form ; and to its mass alone, for

that determined the radius to which it finally stood

compressed.8

Substance Now, all substances behave differently according to

haiTii'd the temperature and the pressure under which they

pressure. exist, both as to physical state and in their display of

chemical action. Diverse results ensue from diverse

conditions. The same element melts or remains solid,

combines with another eagerly to form a third utterly

unlike both, or coldly stands aloof from all association,

solely as the temperature or the pressure constrains it

to that end. Each, too, is a law unto itself, and acts

unlike its neighbor as these compelling causes change.

/
THE GENESIS OF A WORLD 9

To them, therefore, diversity is due ; and they in their

turn are conditioned by the mass.

Mass, then, is the fundamental factor in the whole Maw the evolutionary process, the determining departure-point, "n amcn

fixing what the subsequent development shall be.

Though the bodies were in essence the same at the

start, their initial quantity would change their very

quality as time went on. What started like would

become different ; for the gathering together of the

particles into a single body was the preface to that

body's planetary career.

Not until the internal heat began to abate did what

we call evolution set in. Up to then the growing

temperature induced a devolution or separating into

simplicity of what had been complex. The time taken

by each planet to reach its maximum bodily heat

differed as between one and another. The larger the

body, the slower it attained the greatest temperature of

which it was capable, both by reason directly of its

mass, and indirectly of the pressure to which that mass

gave rise.

At its heat-acme the picture each planet presented Cooling.

was all its own. Some may have been white-hot,

some certainly were red-hot, some were merely darkly

warm ; for one differed from another in self-endowment

of warmth or light, each with a glory of its own.

Radiation had, of course, been going on from the
io MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

time the impact of the particles began. At first the

heat gained by contraction surpassed that radiated

away, but at last a

time came when the

depletion exceeded the

generation of heat, and

the planet began to

cool. By parting with

its caloric into space,

its surface fell in tem

perature. Unlike in

amount of acquisi

tion, the bodies were

no less unlike in the

manner of their loss.

Each acted according

to its kind. Those

that originally had lit

tle, lost that little fast ;

for volume is a matter

of three dimensions,

surface of but two,

and as through their surfaces their volumes cooled,

the smaller got rid of their heat with relatively

greater speed. Just as if two stones be put

into the fire and then taken out, the smaller will

turn cold while the larger is yet warm. With the

 

Meteorite from Canon Diablo, Arizona.

Pitted by fusion in traversing the earth's

Atmosphere.
THE GENESIS OF A WORLD ii

planets, contrast in performance was accentuated from

the fact that the big ones were intrinsically hotter at

the start. Thus, for two reasons, the large lingered

in the race : they had more to lose, and they lost it

more reluctantly.

In consequence the life-history of a planet was long Life-history or short in proportion to its size. If little, it ran .epenson

through its gamut of change fast, and that gamut was

itself brief; if large, it tarried in its several stages,

and those stages were themselves drawn out. But, in

addition to this, the larger knew states the smaller

in their heating had never reached. Diversified age,

both in length of years and in breadth of experience,

was thus the first

result of size.

Six stages may

conveniently be dis

tinguished in the

progress of a planet

from sun to cinder,

all of which will be

traversed by the

body, if it be suffi

ciently big. If it be

of asteroidal size, it

virtually knows none of them, remaining meteoric from

first to last. The six periods may be designated : —

 

Meteorite from Canon Diablo, Arizona

Surface polished. Showing method of

crystallization.
12 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

i. The Sun Stage. Hot enough to emit light.

II. The Molten Stage. Hot, but lightless.

in. The Solidifying Stage. Solid surface formed.

Ocean basins determined. Age of Metamorphic rocks,

iv. Therocks. Terraqueous Stage. Age of sedimentary

v. The Terrestrial Stage. Oceans have disappeared,

vi. The Dead Stage. Air has departed.

Present

aspects of the

planets our

guide. 

Though we cannot in our own ephemeral life watch

any planet pass through these several phases of its

career, we can get a view of the

process by studying the present

conditions of the various planets

and piecing together the informa

tion we thus obtain. It is, in the

end, as conclusive as in botany

would be the study of a wood

by carefully noting the condition

of the individual trees in their

various growths from seedling

to patriarch. Thus, at the present moment, in Stage

II are found Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, and Jupiter;

in Stage IV, the Earth; in Stage V, Mars; and in

Stage VI, the Moon and the larger satellites of the

other planets.

Cloud Effect on

As observed Jl'l'lTER at the Lowell

observatory in 1907,

indicating that Jupiter

is in the second planetologic stage.
THE GENESIS OF A WORLD 13

Each planet's internal heat was its initial motivepower, and cooling the mode by which this energy

worked, first, to the fashioning of its surface, and then

to all evolution upon it. While still in the molten

state the mass was a seething chaos but little differen

tiated from any other equal agglomeration of matter.

Yet even here the several substances had begun to

segregate, the heavier falling to the bottom, the lighter

rising to the top.

With Stage III we enter the part of a planet's Geologic

career with which, on our Earth, geology is concerned. "^J^,,,

Though specifically the story only of our Earth, that

science has analogues elsewhere, and to be best under

stood needs to be generically considered. Local as

many Earth-happenings are, with increasing light from

the heavens it is becoming clear that the main events

are of cosmic occasioning, and that astronomic cause

presides over their manifestations. Initial instance of

planetary action occurs at the first stage of the Earth's

history to which geology mounts back —that in which

a crust began to form over the molten mass. The liq

uid metal in a furnace upon which the solidifying slag

has begun to float gives us an idea of this early state

of things. Our metamorphic rocks were in action

akin to the furnace slag, rising to the surface because

of their lightness. Proof of this lies in their present

density, which is only about one-half of the average
i4 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

Landscape

the result

of cooling.

density of the Earth, 2.7 times that of water instead of

5.5. Their constitution furnishes further evidence

that such they were. The gneiss, mica, and horn

blende of which they are composed show by their

crystalline form that they cooled from a once molten

state, and their foliation indicates that they were crum

pled and recrystallized in the process.

In Stage III the body first acquires a physiognomy

of its own. Up to then it is a chaotic mass as unstable

and shifting as clouds in the sky ; but at the advent of

surface solidification its features take form —a form

they are in fundamentals ever afterward to keep. Its

face is then modelled once for all ; and its face is the

expression of its character. Our knowledge of this

stage and of the two subsequent stages IV and V is

derived from study of three planets of our system, the

Earth, the Moon, and Mars. The others contribute

nothing to our information of these mid-phases, either

because, like Mercury and Venus, they are too ad

vanced, or because, like the major planets, Jupiter,.

Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, they are not advanced

enough.

Landscape is simply the sculpturing due the fash

ioning cause of planet physiognomy. As the sub

stances composing the mass cool, some of them expand ;

but most of them contract, and in consequence of this

the crust finds itself too large for what it encloses.
THE GENESIS OF A WORLD *5

To fit the shrunken kernel it must needs crumple

into folds. These folds are what we know as moun

tain ranges —long, low swells while the crust is yet

thin, abrupt and broken fractures when it has become

thick. The valleys between mark the down-folds

of the squeeze.

Wrinkles are

thus as inevitable

a consequence of

planetary aging

as of man's, only

that while they

are thought a

disfigurement in

him, they are re

garded as beauti

ful in a world.

Such crinkling

of its cuticle is

most pronounced

where the heat to

begreatest, got ridandof isthe surface to Contraction radiate it is relatively

least. Both conditions are fulfilled the more com

pletely the bigger the body. The larger the planet,

therefore, the more mountainous its surface will be

when it reaches the crumpling stage of its career.

 

An Api'lr, shrunk to show the Effect of

Mountains in

proportion to
16 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

phenomena. volcanic andjnvolcanoes likg mannerarise, is volcanic violent action and widespread, relatively increased, in pro

portion ; since these are vents by which the molten

matter under pressure within finds exit abroad. This

is shown in their positioning. They occur where the

crust is most permeable; and so are found along the

edges of continents, as these are weakened by dipping

down into the sea.

Relative Three bodies exist near us in space where the workEarth Moon mS °^ tn's inevitable action stands displayed, and its

and Mare. comparative effects may thus be studied : the Earth,

Mars, and the Moon. With the accidented character

of the Earth's surface we are all familiar. Its moun

tains, its volcanoes, and its hills go to make up its

loveliest and its grandest features. Its mass fashioned

them, and fashioned them as they are because its mass

was large. This mass is nine times that of Mars, and

eighty-one times that of the Moon. Being greater

than that of the Moon or Mars, our globe should

have crumpled more, and those other two bodies

should have smoother contours than the Earth shows.

The general order of their roughness should be

Earth, Mars, Moon.

No mountains Now, when we come to scan Mars with nicety, we

on Mars. are gradually j n made1 aware orr a curious • condition «• . orc its •

surface. It proves singularly devoid of irregularity.

The more minutely it is viewed, the more its level
THE GENESIS OF A WORLD 17

ness grows apparent. Finally, calculation shows that

heights, even of very moderate elevation, should be

visible if such existed, and none show. Thus we are con

fronted by the fact that there are no mountains on Mars.

Second only in interest to the fact itself is the simt method by which that fact has been found out. To ' uminat,onappreciate the problem, we may recall the appearance

of a road lighted by electric arc-lights placed at such

considerable distances apart that the illumination falls

aslant. All of us who, on dark nights in the country,

have trudged along such pikes, have started at the

mammoth sharp-cut shadows of its ruts, so that we

have lifted our feet to surmount what threatened to

stub our toes, only to find the obstacles not there.

To such delusion were we led by the monstrous

length of the shadows thrown with unexpected vivid

ness across our path.

Now, the fact of such projection, —as Cowper puts important to

it of his legs under the rays of a rising or a setting

sun, "spindling into longitude immense," —bother

ing as it is to the midnight pedestrian on arc-lit roads,

proves to the astronomer of inestimable use. For

without its aid he had forever remained incapable of

gaging the inequalities of the terrene of the heavenly

bodies to any fine precision.

When an object stands on the sunrise, or the sun

set, edge of a planet, the slant illumination it then

astronomers.
1 8 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

receives throws its shadows to a great distance from

its foot. A tapering finger searching the plains as

the sun changes position, it may be a hundredfold the

height of the object casting it. The effect is well seen

in photographs of the moon.

Deprived of this natural kind of magnification, the

astronomer would be forced to measure the object

itself for just what it was, as it showed in profile on

the limb, the fully illuminated rim of the planet where

the sight-line of the observer grazes horizontally the

surface, and shows heights for just what they are.

With shadows he has a vernier to his hand. For the

derived may be any number of times longer than the

original.

On the same principle, by noting the distance off

the general sun-lightened edge at which some fortunate

peak first catches the rays of the rising sun, or holds

latest his setting beams, its loftiness may be found.4

The principle has been employed to determine the

heights of the mountains in the Moon. By the help

of trigonometry the shadows and the star-like tips of

peaks, standing isolate beyond the general edge of

light, have been made to tell their tale of elevation.

In consequence, we know the heights of crater walls

there, to within a few hundred feet, as accurately almost

as we know them on Earth by our aneroids. Applied to '

Mars. The same procedure applied to Mars results in a
THE GENESIS OF A WORLD l9

negative outcome. While the sunrise or sunset edge

of the Moon is palpably notched, even to the naked

eye, as any one may see who scans it carefully a

 

Phase View of the Moon, showing the Effect of a Mountainous

Surface on the Terminator (the Dividing Line between the

Illuminated and the Obscured Part of the Face)

few days before or after the half, the similar edge of

Mars is wonderfully smooth and even. One may

gaze, armed with the most powerful glass, night after

night, and never detect the least irregularity in its
20 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

 

elliptic outline. Commonly, at most, he will notice

slight flattenings here and there where a dark area

happens at the moment to be passing over the boun

dary of sunlight and shade. So

rare is it to perceive any other

indentation or excrescence upon

the smooth rim of its disk where

the light fades away, that to do

soevent. is something The veryof anrarity astronomicf the

Phase View of Mars, AMay,Smooth1907,Terminator showing ,phenomenon .—there has, cbeen1

/ r „ „ i.„„ .^ but one good one at each or the (the Curved Line at 0

the Left), which in- iast three oppositions —proves

DICATF.S THAT THERE aRE no Mountains on the the projections not to be due to

Planet what causes them on the Moon,

an accidented surface. In short, they cannot indicate

mountains, for a mountain is a permanence, which under

similar conditions should either always or never show.

Now, for many nights in succession, indeed for weeks

together, Mars presents us his disk under substantially

the same conditions night after night ; so that if the

obstacle that caught the light were part and pared of

the surface, however it might tower above that sur

face's customary level, it should be seen as regularly

as the planet's rotation brought it round. The fact

that it fails of such continuity of expression is proof

conclusive that it is of no such origin.
THE GENESIS OF A WORLD 21

 

View of the Earth, showing the Proportion of Land and Sea

Sporadicity, then, far from raising the slightest pre- Not indicative

r r • , 1 • • 1 • of mountains. sumption in tavor or mountains, or indicating their

uncommonness, is absolutely fatal to the observed

phenomenon being a mountain at all. Now, as none

of these projections seen on Mars are of permanent

appearance, we perceive that there are no mountains

on Mars. Such impermanence testifies not only neg

atively but positively to their character. For, from

the fact that when detected two nights running they

prove to have changed their place in the interval, we
22 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

Two or three

thousand feet

limit of eleva

tion on Mars. have witness that they are unattached. Thus they

come from something floating in the planet's air ; to

wit, clouds, and, furthermore, from

their color, clouds of dust.

From the evidence as to scale

afforded by the Moon, we can

tell what height we ought to be

able to detect in this manner on

Mars. We find it by calculation

to be two to three thousand feet.

Nothing, therefore, higher than this modest elevation

exists there, which leaves us for contemplation a sur

face singularly flat, according to the idea with which our

Earth has furnished us. A Martian landscape would

 

Dust Storm on Mars,

from a Drawing,

May 28, 1903

 

From " Old and New Astronomy," by R. A. Proctor, Longmans, Green & Co.

Two Views of the Earth, 1800 apart, showing the Polar Caps and

General Features as seen from Space

seem to us remarkably peaceful and tame, —scenery

chiefly noticeable for the lack of everything that with

us goes to make it up.

Contemplating now the Moon in the light of what
THE GENESIS OF A WORLD 23

we have thus learned, the first thought that strikes us

is the glaring exception seemingly made by it to the

theoretic order of smoothness, Earth, Mars, Moon,

above laid down. The lunar surface is conspicuously

rough, pitted with what are evidently volcanic cones

of enormous girth and of great height, and seamed by

ridges more than the equal of the Earth's in elevation.

 

Two Views of Mars, about i8o° apart, showing the Polar Caps and

General Features for Comparison with the Earth (as above)

Many lunar craters have ramparts 17,000 feet high,

and some exceed in diameter 100 miles; while the

Leibnitz range of mountains, seen in profile on the

lunar limb, rises nearly 30,000 feet into space.

On the principle that the internal heat to cause Internal

contraction was as the body's mass, —and no physical thm bodies

deduction is sounder, —this state of things on the

surface of our satellite is unaccountable. The Moon

should have a surface like a frozen sea, and it shows

one that surpasses the Earth's in shagginess. To per

ceive this more definitely we will make that not unin

teresting thing, an evaluation of the heat evolved by
24 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

both the Moon and the Earth, supposing their origin

the same. We will express it in terms, if not in fig

ures, that are comprehensible. The result is startling.

Unaccountable at a first view, the event proves actually

impossible when we subject the heat evolved by a like

genesis to numerical computation. If the Earth con

tracted homogeneously from an infinite expansion to its

present state, and none of its heat were lost meanwhile

by radiation, calculation shows that the energy evolved

would be sufficient to raise the temperature of its en

tire mass to 146,000° F., if that mass were composed

of iron, which represents about its present density and

is probably not far from the fact. If it were com

posed of other material, the temperature of that

material would be different, according to its capacity

for heat. Thus quartz has a capacity nearly twice

that of iron (sp. ht. 0.20) and water one of five times

as much (sp. ht. 1.00). The temperatures would be

reduced in proportion.

If, instead of supposing the body homogeneous, we

consider it heterogeneous, as indeed it is, and treat it by

the simplest law consistent with physical principles and

an approach to fact, to wit, that the density increases

from surface to centre and that it resists compression

in proportion as it stands compressed, — the formula

assumed by Laplace, —we get an even greater amount

of heat generated.
THE GENESIS OF A WORLD 25

We do not know the law of parting with this heat,

though the greater portion of it was certainly radiated

away in the process. But we may make some approx

imation, at least as between the several planets con

cerned, by assuming the heat near the surface to have

been, at its maximum, what a body contracting from

the density of its constituents, the meteorites, to its own

eventual density would generate. We do this because

the heat thus begotten proves in the case of the Earth

to have been more than sufficient for all the volcanic

and orogenic phenomena displayed. Now, as it is

common physical knowledge that a small body cools

quicker than a large one, we shall not err on the side of

making Mars' internal heat too small if we apply the

same principle to it. When we so evaluate the heat

for the Earth and Moon,5 we get results as follows: —

23,000° F. and 80° F.

Here, then, we are landed in a quandary. If the

Moon was generated on its own account, as the Earth

and Mars were, the internal heat it was able to amass

was never anything like the amount sufficient to pro

vide for the features which its surface shows. It could

not even have kept itself from freezing amid the

terrible cold of space. Now, it will be noticed that

we said " if its genesis was like our own " ; that is,

that it came into being by itself alone. In this saving

"if" will be found the explanation of the dilemma.
26 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

Darwinian Some years ago Sir George Darwin showed analytiiun^7origin system, ca^y tnatwhente traced action backward, of the tideslandsin ustheatEarth- a timeMoon when

 

Confirmed by

lunar surface. From a photograph taken at the Lowell Observatory.

A Part of the Moon's Face, showing Ancient Sea-bottom

the Moon might have formed a part of the Earth's

mass, the two rotating together as a single pear-shaped

body in about five hours. His analysis pointed to

what might have been. Now the pregnant point in

our present heat inquiry is that the face of our satellite

indicates The erupted that thestate might-have-been of the Moon'sactually surfacewas. speaks of

such a genesis. For in that event the internal heat
THE GENESIS OF A WORLD 27

which the Moon carried away with it must have been

that of the parent body —the amount the Earth-Moon

had been able to amass. Thus the Moon was en

dowed from the start of its separate existence with an

amount of heat the falling together of its own mass

could never have generated. Thus its great craters

and huge volcanic cones stand explained. It did not

originate as a separate body, but had its birth in a rib

of Earth.

Far from disproving the law, the seeming lunar ex

ception, therefore, really upholds it.

We may now go on to apply the principle to no Probable less interesting a determination —the case of Mars.6 .compaTMt"e

O internal neat If, taking into account the radiation which has cease- of earth and

. Mars. lessly gone on from the time when first the matter

started to collect, we allow i0,000° F. for the effective

internal heat of the Earth, we shall be making it a

liberal allowance. Now, computation shows that an

internal heat of i0,000° F. for the Earth would cor

respond to about 20000 F. for Mars. But the melt

ing-point of iron is 22000 F., so that iron would not

have fused, and we should have in consequence virtu

ally no volcanic action. Furthermore, there could

have been but little crinkling of the crust. For, first,

the direct pressure was less, and then the heat, its indirect

effect, was correspondingly small ; so that Mars can

not have contracted much, and so must largely have
28 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

Continental

and oceanic

areas formed.

Their distri

bution

determined.

escaped crumpling. What the contraction was may be

inferred from comparison of its density with that of

meteorites. The mean density of meteorites which

are mostly stone with some iron is 3.5, that of Mars

4., and that of the Earth 5.5, water being unity. The

planet should show, therefore, a remarkably smooth and

level surface ; and this is precisely what the telescope

reveals.

The crust, to the folding of which a planet's physi

ognomy is due, was forming during all the time the

planet took to cool on its surface from the temperature

of the fusion-point of gneiss to the boiling-point of

water, or from about 20000 F. down to 21 2° F. In

some places it gathered thicker than in others ; and

inasmuch as it floated, stood up higher, to which height

crumpling contributed. Up to the time when its

liquefaction-point was reached, water existed only in the

form of steam, but on the fall of the temperature to

"2 1 2° F. the steam fell with it, condensing into water.

Into the troughs already there the water, as soon as it

formed, proceeded to run. Thus the oceans came into

being.

We may apply this to the Earth and consider an

important consequent detail. The fashioning cause of

the depressions that gave rise to the distribution of

what we know as continents and seas is of great in

terest, for it seems to have been determined in a
THE GENESIS OF A WORLD 29

general way by cosmic considerations. If we scan a

map of the globe, we shall mark a significant fact :

that in all the continents a certain apexing to the south

is discernible. Witness North and South America,

 

View of Mars, showing the Proportion of Dark and Light Areas

The dark areas are probably old sea-bottoms, and the light ones, desert land.

Mars is here given of its true relative size as regards the Earth on page 21 —

so that the actual surface of its former seas as well as their relative proportion

to the land areas may be compared with those of the Earth.

Greenland, Africa, and India. Blunt-based to the

north, they all terminate in a tip southward. Australia

is the only one of the great continental masses that

fails to show the peculiarity at first glance. But a
3o MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

bathymetric chart reveals the fact that the platform on

which it stands does indeed do so, Tasmania being

really a part of it and making the detached tip.

True Martian Nor does the Earth alone present us with such

curious conformations, for Mars has a word to say on

the subject. On casting one's eye over a map of that

planet, one is struck by the triangular projections of

the dark areas into the northern hemisphere. The

Syrtis Major is the most conspicuous instance ; but

the Margaritifer Sinus, the Sabaeus Sinus, and the

Trivium Charontis exhibit a similar propensity.

Now, when we reflect that the dark regions take the

place of seas on Mars, this apexing of them to the

north stands as the negative aspect of the positive

picture presented by the Earth. Reverse the relative

ratio of depressions to plateaux in order to get the

seas and continents in their earthly proportions, with

the oceans preponderant, as on Earth, instead of, as on

Mars, in abeyance, and the two distributions are seen

to typify the same action.

Their relative The amount of surface the oceans covered on any

frrenT lanets Particu1ar planet was again a consequence of the

particular planet's size. If the material forming the

planetary bodies was of the same general character

throughout the fields they severally swept clear, which,

to a certain extent, is probable, and the more so as

the planets stand neighborly near, the amount of
THE GENESIS OF A WORLD 31

water each possessed would be as its mass, and when

it collected into seas, these, if equally deep, would

cover more of the surface in the larger planet, since it

 

View of the Moon at the Fill, showing the Proportion of Dark

(so-called "Seas") and Liuht Areas

Only the darkest patches are thought to be sea-bottoms.

Moon of true relative size to Earth (page 21) and Mars (page 29).

has less cuticle for its contents. We have seen, how

ever, that this cuticle would be more crinkled and of

greater accentuation in the larger body, owing to a

greater contraction in the kernel within ; the folding

we may perhaps take as being roughly proportionate

to the radius of the globe. The larger body would,
32 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

therefore, begin life with larger oceans, even if it were

born with but its share of water ; but, as a fact, it

would have more than its share because of being

better able to hold on to its gaseous elements, and

thus retain more of what was to condense to water

when the time arrived.

Now the three bodies, the Earth, Mars, and the

Moon, have, or had, in all probability, judging from

their present look, oceans in this order of size, the

Earth having the most in amount, Mars the next, and

the Moon the least.

In the case of the Moon the matter is complicated

by the fact that when it left the Earth it took probably

not only a greater amount of light constituents than a

solitary genesis would have permitted, but even a

greater proportion than the Earth retained since it was

born of the outer and therefore lighter layers of

the Earth-Moon mass. It thus started more pro

fusely endowed with the wherewithal to oceans than

its size warranted.

Earth's proved On allpersistent. three planets On their both primeval the Moontopography and Mars has the

dark areas are apparently the lowest portions of the

surface, while their character points to their having

held seas once upon a time. With Mars it is

their present occupancy, though by something other

than water, that tells the tale ; with the Moon the fact

oceanic basins

unchanged.
THE GENESIS OF A WORLD 3$

that rays and rills run athwart them discloses it, be

speaking their age.

Turning to the Earth, according to the best evidence

we possess, the great ocean basins have remained un

changed in place from- the period when they were laid

down. Not that the areas marked out as land and

water at any epoch have not greatly altered since the

beginning of geologic time; but the abyssal depths on

the one hand, and the continental platforms on the

other, have not substantially varied during all these

ages. If we examine a bathymetric chart of our

several oceans, giving their body by registering their

depth, instead of a superficial one which marks simply

where the water laps the land, and consider the one

hundred-fathom line, the ocean bottoms and the con

tinental plateaux stand well differentiated from each

other. It is then seen that each continent is set on a

shelf wider in some places than in others, but at its

edge falling abruptly to the marine abysses, which,

though themselves uneven, stand, with the exception

of a few islands, projecting and submarine, at a gener

ally much lower level. This indicates that they have

always held such attitude.

But the character of these ocean bottoms furnishes Thm fwthe best testimony that they have not changed during lng lttaits *'

geologic time. Their flooring is organic ooze or inor

ganic clay, globigerina, radiolarian, or diatom ooze,
34 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

according to locality and depth, and red clay formed of

the decomposition of volcanic stuff. In this ooze and

clay, spherules of metallic iron, identified as similar in

substance to that of falling stars, are still recognizable

in perceptible amount, and as they must accumulate

with exceeding slowness, their patent presence asserts

the absence there of sedimentary silt from any shore.

These abysses, then, have always been abysses from

the start. That astronomy should tell us this is

strikingly suggestive, while of peculiar planetologic in

terest is it that meteors again should be our inform

ants of the fact.
CHAPTER II

THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE

UPON the fall of the temperature to the condensing The origin

point of water, occurred another event in the lifc

evolution of our planet, the Earth, and one of great

import to us : life arose. For with the formation of

water, protoplasm (the physical basis of all plants and

animals) first beafme possible, what may be called the

 

Model of a Brontosaurus, a first Possessor of the Earth's Land, in

the American Museum of Natural History*

The fossil skeleton is 15 ft. and 2 in. high and 66 ft. and 8 in. long.

life molecule then coming into existence. By it,

starting in a simple, lowly way, and growing in

complexity with time, all vegetable and animal forms

* This illustration and those succeeding it to page 41 were kindly furnished the

author for the purpose, by Professor Osborn.

35
36 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

have since been gradually built up. In itself the

organic molecule is only a more intricate chemical

combination of the same elements of which the inor

ganic substances

which preceded it

are composed. It

is thus carrying on

the building-up

process begun by

the inorganic be

fore it. Between

the organic and

the inorganic, in

creasing knowl

edge, by pushing

back to greater

and greater sim

plicity the forms

of life discovered,

has tended to

break down the

barrier man had

assumed to exist.

There is now no

Plant Life in the G.al Measures more reason to

From a fossil specimen in the American Museum of ClOUDt tn3.t plants

Nalural History, found in Illinois, here shown c ,

two-thirds its size. grew out of chem

 
THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE 37

ical affinity than to doubt that stones did. Spon

taneous generation is as certain as spontaneous varia

tion, of which it is, in fact, only an expression.

But it is not spontaneous generation in the popular

sense. By that term many persons think of flies

suddenly born of decaying meat, and this they know

has been shown impossible. But this is simply be

cause flies are far too advanced a product to be thus

suddenly evolved. For them to be so produced

would as directly controvert all we know of evolution

as that, given the proper conditions, the lowest rudi

ments of life would not arise. That even the latter

may nowhere be evolved on earth at the present time

does not invalidate such origin for it when the con

ditions were other than they are to-day.

From all we have learned of its constitution on the Life an in- one hand, or of its distribution on the other, we know TM , c p J

' ' or planetary life to be as inevitable a phase of planetary evolution evolution.

as is quartz or feldspar or nitrogenous soil. Each

and all of them are only manifestations of chemical

affinity resultant on condition, and considering the

oneness of the stuff, it is the conditions alone we

have to investigate if we would learn what is to come.

Virtually only six so-called elements go to make up

the molecule of life. It is the number of its constituent

atoms, and the intricacy of their binding together, that

give it the instability to produce the vital actions.
3* MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus, and

sulphur are practically all that are required. If a

planet be capable of furnishing these under suitable

temperature con

ditions, it seems

as inevitable that

life will ensue as

that the two ele

ments sodium and

chlorine will unite

to form common

salt when the heat

and the pressure

are right. Now,

on its face, it is

suggestive of the

u niversality oflife

that the elements

that go to form it

are of all elements

the most wide

spread. Oxygen,

the chief factor

in all organisms,

makes by weight

one-half the substance of the earth's surface ;

silicon, a large constituent of shells, comes next in

 

Plant Life of the Upper Devonian

From a fossil specimen in the American Museum

of Natural History, found in New Brunswick.

 
THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE 39

amount ; and the others follow in the constitution of

life about in the order of their natural abundance.

For proof of the continuity of the processes of both

structure and change in the inorganic and organic alike,

nothing at once more conclusive and more interesting

can be recommended than the books of the great

Haeckel, couched in language every educated person

can understand.

Of all the conditions preparatory to life, the presence Water

of water, composed of oxygen and hydrogen, is at once ^"'

the most essential and the most world-wide. For if

water be present, the presence of other necessary ele

ments is probably assured because of its relative light

ness as a gas. Furthermore, if water exist, that fact

goes bail for the necessary temperature, the gamut of

life being coextensive with the existence of water as

such. It is so consequentially, life being impossible

without water. Whatever the planet, this is of neces

sity true. But the absolute degrees of temperature

within which life can exist vary according to the mass

of the body, another of the ways in which mere size

tells. On the earth 21 2° F. (i00° C.) limits the range

at the top, and 320 F. (0° C.) at the bottom in the case of

fresh water, 27 ° F. (— 30 C.) in the case of salt. On a

smaller planet both limits would be lowered, the top

one the most. On Mars the boiling-point would prob

ably be about n0° F. (43°C.).7 Secondly, from the
4o MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

general initial oneness of their constituents, a planet that

still possesses water will probably retain the other sub

stances that are essential to life : gases, for the reason

 

A Trilobite, one of the Earliest Forms of Animal Life preserved

From the fossil specimen in Niagara shale, in the American Museum of Natural

History, here shown two-fifths natural size.

that water-vapor is next to hydrogen, and helium the

lightest of them all ; and solids because their weight

would still more conduce to keep them there. Water,

indeed, acts as solution to the whole problem.

Water plays a protagonist part in the origination

and the development of protoplasm by constituting
THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE 41

f

at least nine-tenths of its substance. But, to begin

with, it actually furnished the stage-setting for the

drama of life by providing a medium in which it

could evolve and

function. This allimportant use of

water by living

organisms is shown

both by the pres

ent state of all ani

mals and plants and

by what science is

discovering of their

past history.

There never was

a time, and there

apparently never

will be a time, when

plasm can do with

out that indispen

sable ingredient of

life. At first, in

the lowest unicellu

lar plants and animals, it forms the whole environment,

completely enveloping the organism. Thus the simplest

cells are found In the sea, in ponds, and even in hotspring geysers nearly at the boiling-point. In fact,

 

Fossil Footprints of Amphibia

From a slab reproduced in Prof'-ssor Edward

Hitchcock's " Report on the Sandstone of the

Connecticut Valley."
42 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

Seas the

earliest home

of mundane

life.

far from this last habitat being peculiar, it is in such

warm baths that plasm undoubtedly took its rise.

Protophyte and protozoa lived in a sea that to us

would have been fatally hot.

Here is the reason for the contemporaneous ap

pearance of oceans and of life : the one was the neces

sary home of the other. That it was so in fact

geology states. The geologic record proves that life

originated in the oceans, and lived there for long eons

before it so much as crawled out upon the land. Seas

were the nurseries of mundane life. Whether life

might have gen

erated on land

we do not know ;

on earth it cer

tainly did not,

possibly because

seas were intrin

sically the better

habitat in place

and in time for

 

dition from a depth of about soo fathoms (3000 feet). tne Uniformity

Specimens of Deep-sea Fish

These specimens were obtained by the Challenger Expe

dition from a depth of about 500 fathoms (3000

They illustrate life formerly thought impossible. Qf tne conditions

they offered ; possibly because they were all the home

there was. For the land was a sorry spectacle in those

days. Granite fringed by mud-flats pictures but an in

hospitable sight. The seas were much as they are now,
THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE 43

only warmer. Their equable temperature for wide locali

ties and their slow accommodation to climatic change

rendered them places of easy livelihood to simple organ

isms. In addition to which, food, inorganic at first, was

floated past the baby plants or animals, and as con

stantly renewed. To its seas and oceans our planet,

then, is actually, if not necessarily, indebted for the

life which now teems everywhere upon its surface.

Life, once started, continued the course of advance

ment thus aquatically begun just as itself was the

continuance of the inorganic development which had

gone before. And the deus ex machina was the same

—a gradual lowering of temperature. Cooling was

what occasioned increasingly high forms of life, and in

two ways this was simultaneously brought about —by

preparation of habitat and by prompting of the organ

ism to appropriate it.

The record written in the rocks of our own earth

permits us to trace the history of the spread of life.

With the gathering of the waters into their place

began a new stage in the world's physiographic career

—the stage of sedimentary formations. Until the

seas were, no strata could be laid down ; but with

their advent both motive force and suitable sites were

present, and, in consequence, what the welkin-born

torrents tore down of the naked earth was deposited

over the edges of the continents, now here, now there,
44 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

according as upheaval or subsidence slightly changed

the continental altitude toward the sea-level. One

bed after another was thus made, until they were sev

eral thousand feet thick in places, each being tucked into

its long repose by later coverlets superposed upon it.

Entombed in these strata are the skeletons of all

those animals that a not too flimsy structure permitted

to survive the casualties of flood and commotion or

the long disintegration of time. The softer ones have

necessarily vanished, leaving as a rule no trace. The

rocks are thus vast graveyards of life that once inhab

ited the earth. They give us the only direct record

of the past, and a record which from the necessities of

the case is perforce imperfect. Especially are the

earlier chapters effaced for the gelatinous character of

primeval protoplasm and the forms it first built up.

Thus the earliest preserved remains of life are already

somewhat advanced types, crustacea in the shape of

trilobites being the most primordial specimens that

have come down to us in unquestionable state. From

this lowly start the line can be followed upward, un

folding through the strata, the marvellous thing being

not the paucity, but the fulness, of the record thus

written by the animals themselves. For animals and

plants, too perishable to endure, have left their stamp

behind, and even footprints of past reptiles confront

us, legible still on the hardened sands of time, as if
THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE 45

fossils.

made yesterday in the spots they traversed hundreds

of centuries ago.

According to their age, the rocks are designated by Uniformity

1 • 1 r • of paleozoic geologists as primary, secondary, or tertiary formations,

representing paleozoic, mesozoic, and aenozoic eras,

meaning the old, the middle, and the new lifetimes, so

called from the remains embedded in them.

For our purpose, the most remarkable characteristic

of the primary rocks consists in the world-wide uni

formity of their contemporary life as exhibited in these

fossils of the far past. In the earliest beds existent

species prove to have been coevally widespread. In

the Cambrian, the lowest of the primary strata exhibit

ing unmistakable organic remains, we find identical

species of seaweeds and trilobites appearing, regardless

of latitude, in France and Siberia; and indifferently on

both sides of the equator, in the Argentine Republic,

as in Europe and North America. In the beds above

these, the Silurian, it is the same story. Some of the

genera and even some identical species have been

found alike in Europe and North America and in Tas

mania, Australia, and New Zealand. Evidence of a

like latitudinarianism is forthcoming in the Devonian

deposits that followed them and in the early stages of

the succeeding Carboniferous.

The fauna so distributed was a warmth-loving one,

an attribute betrayed by the fact that their nearest
46 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

relatives now extant live wholly within the tropics,

huddled as it were about the equator. Coral reefs,

now not found outside of the warm equatorial seas in

a temperature not less than 68° F., were reared then in

spots now covered with perpetual ice, within eight

degrees of the pole. A species of polyp coral, Lithostrontion by name, has been found as a fossil between

Point Barrow and Kotzebue Sound, and others in

Grinnell Land in latitude 8i° 45' north.

At first the fauna was wholly marine, but gradually

the land grew less impossible. Wings of insects have

been found in the Lower Silurian, and in the Upper,

insects themselves, scorpions both aquatic, apparently,

and terrene. Vestiges of plants in the Devonian fore

shadowed the superb plant life of the Carboniferous.

Carboniferous The flora of the coal measures corroborates the tes- pint warmth timony which of te then animals existed. of thatGigantic day toferns, the fifty climatic feet

high ; others, more lowly, thirty feet in spread ; marshloving calamites, horsetails, and club-mosses, dignified

to the dimensions of trees, spread their incipient leaves

from well-nigh woodless stems, and grew, flourished,

and decayed with almost Jack-and-the-beanstallc rapid

ity between 330 and 70° of latitude. Only a warm,

humid foothold and lambent air could have given them

such luxuriance and impressed them with such speed.

In the vast marshes which constituted so large a
THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE 47

portion of the continents this vegetation was singularly

same. Not pretty, but profuse ; dense, but not varied,

cryptogams composed its greater part, attesting by the

habit of the ferns of to-day to the shady half-light in

which they must have lived. Grotesque rather than

beautiful, no flowers touched with color the sombre

stems. No birds made the air about them half sentient

with song. Only shade-affecting insects, May-flies of

mammoth wing, flitted through the gloom of those old

forests, accentuating a heavy stillness they were power

less to dispel.

The twilight their character thus reveals is shown

by the details of their structure to have been continu

ous. No seasons diversified the work of wood-making,

as the uniform stems of the few gymnosperms then

present attest. No annual rings of growth encircle

them, witnessing to intermediate times of rest. They

minded not extraneous things, but grew right on ; not

to delight the world, but to make coal measures their

industrious end, to which in their own blind way they

excellently conformed. Blind in their habit they may

be said to have been, for they were flowerless and

much restricted of leaf.

Two attributes of the climate this state of things

attests. First, it was warm everywhere with a warmth

probably surpassing that of the tropics of to-day ; and,

second, the light was tempered to a half-light known
48 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

now only under heavy clouds. And both these con

ditions were virtually general in locality and continuous

in time. For such vegetation as existed the climate

was ideal. No enforced hiemal torpor brought on by

stalking delegates of frost compelled the workers con

stantly to stop. It is their less fortunate descendants

only that are limited by nature's imposings to labor

but six months a year.

Light less and Thus the records of the paleozoic rocks bespeak two "'•'.'""" seemingly incongruous things — both less light and

than now. o J O O D

more heat than is the Earth's lot nowadays. Many

hypotheses have been invoked to account for this

warm dawn of the early geologic ages. Some of them

are locally geologic, some broadly astronomic, advanced

by geologists. But of the two kinds all alike fail.

Thus, merely a different distribution of land and

sea will not explain it, because it was general, not local;

and, secondly, because this leaves untouched the prob

lem of less light. Equally impotent is a change of

position in the axis of the Earth ; for were the axis so

far changed as to point directly toward the sun, this

would not do away with the seasons, but would accen

tuate them. Nor will an altered eccentricity in the

Earth's orbit, which has also been suggested, prove

more effective.

Not less impossible is the suggestion due to M.

Blondet, and to which De Lapparent has lent the
THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE 49

weighty indorsement of his name, that the sun was

then so large as to be able to look down on both poles

of the Earth at once, and so to give our globe equal

day and night everywhere and, as he supposes, a sub

stantially even temperature in consequence throughout.

Here the beauty of that to many people deterrently

austere and awe-enshrouded subject, mathematics,

comes in. For it enables us to do that most impor

tant thing for any line of investigation — to subject it

not simply to qualitative, but to quantitative, reasoning.

When we thus calculate what this paleozoic sun must

have been and what its effects, we are brought up on

both counts against impossibilities.

The first impossibility relates to the sun itself. For

it to do as desired it must have filled all the space

inside the orbit of Mercury. For a sun of such stu

pendous size there is no place in modern cosmogonies.

On the other hand, it would have been of incredible

tenuity, only one-fifth as dense as hydrogen gas.

Nor is this all. It must have been thus uncondensed

at a time when the Earth had already solidified. The

conception evolutionary is quite incredible.8

Matters are not bettered for the theory if, passing Effect on the

by the results consequent on the Sun, we calculate

those ensuing to the Earth.

We perceive, in the first place, that the exposure to

the Sun's rays in the arctic regions would have been

K
50 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

by no means uniform, but would have varied greatly

with the time of year. At latitude 820 N., for instance,

the exposure would have been virtually nothing at

midwinter; 25 per cent of what it would be now at

the equator, at the vernal equinox, and 1.24 per cent

of that, at the summer solstice. So that the play of

the seasons would have been much as now.

Secondly, we find that at the arctic circle the solar

heat in midwinter would equal that at present in lati

tude 6o° N., and even at the equinox 820 N. in those

times would be no more heated than is now 46 ° N. in

midwinter. A Quebec winter six months long does

not quite supply an adequate temperature for the

bringing up of a polyp coral family within ten degrees

of the pole.9

So that, when subjected to mathematical treatment,

the supposed paleozoic sun turns out to be quite im

potent to the work demanded of it. The theory fails

as regards the Earth as much as it does with reference

to the Sun.

Earth itself Planetology, however, can offer us a clew to this be- re?on=i f "r clouded hothouse state of things. The Earth's own

paleozoic neat. o

heat, not directly on the crust, but directly on the

water, and thence through its atmosphere, might well

be responsible for paleozoic conditions. For consider

the warmth we know must have existed while the re

cently precipitated seas still were hot. Their temper
THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE 51

ature would furnish an agreeably heated habitat for

organisms such as even the tropics fail to supply to

day, and one which from its genesis would be much the

same from the equator to the poles. Simultaneously,

a vast steaming must have gone up from the still

warm waters, resulting in a welkin of great density.

This would act in two ways to explain the phenomena.

First, the welkin would keep the Earth's own heat

in; and, secondly, it would keep the Sun's heat and

light out. We should have a sort of perpetual trop

ical summer in a twilight of cloud ; a climate superior

to seasons because screened from direct dependence

on the elevation of the sun. This is perfectly in ac

cord with the half-light the vegetation vouches for,

while the luxuriance of that vegetation testifies to the

warmth and even suggests a further, though not the

chief, reason for it in the great amount of carbonic

dioxide its existence establishes as then present in the

air.10 For carbonic dioxide is a great bar to the pas

sage of heat. So is water-vapor. It was dank and

dark in those old carbonic forests because so seethingly steamy overhead.

That the oceans should have retained their heat so

long is not surprising when we reflect upon the great

capacity that water has for heat. Its specific heat,

which means the relative amount needed to raise it one

degree in temperature, is five times that of stone, and
52 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

ten warm parttimes with and that steamy thanofitsiron. after surroundings, they So thatd itcooled. would and would have more still beto

Earth, not In paleozoic times, then, it was the Earth itself, not

motive force tne sun» to which plant and animal primarily stood

in evolution beholden for existence. This gives us a most instruc- in the pale ozoic era. planet's tive glimpse own internal into oneheatplanetologic is due the process. chief fostering To theof

the beginnings of life upon its surface. Thus a planet

is capable of at least beginning to develop organisms

without more than a modicum of help from the central

sun. We talk of the sun as the source of life ; and so

it is to-day in the sense of being its sustainer ; but the

real source was the Earth itself, which also raised it

through its babyhood.

a once lotSomething of Mars. ofSeveral the same circumstances history probably render this fell tolikely. the

If its initial surface temperature was in the neighbor

hood of 20000 F., it was well above the productionpoint of steam. So that a cloud canopy would be

possible when a general volcanic fervor of the surface

was not. Then the apparent presence in those early

days of seas would furnish the wherewithal of clouds.

Thus Mars would seem to have possessed the neces

sary substance to its veiling, and the requisite con

ditions to that end. If a planet be big enough to

bring forth life, it may well provide a set of atmos
THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE 53

pheric swaddling-clothes in which that life goes through

its early days.

Under such paleozoic conditions life passed the first Life outgrow*

eons of its earthly existence. Gradually life outgrew

the need of such careful housing, water within the

organism remaining as necessary as before. Organic

development proceeded from amoeba to fish, attaining

no mean height in the process. But at last a better

habitat offered itself, and was speedily appropriated.

Weathering of the land and constantly changing

chemic processes prepared the continents for organic

use. Plants, as we have seen, at last found foothold,

and insects an abode. Then came the exodus from

the sea. We may picture some adventurous fish,

spurred blindly from within, essaying the shore in

preference to the main. Tentatively at first he must

have ventured, as became such bold endeavor. Find

ing the littoral not inhospitable, the pioneer reported

his exploit and was followed by others whom mutation

had specially endowed. This impulse toward the new,

from the promptings of altered character, which we call

spontaneous variation, is the motive principle of life.

It probably derives from the instability of the plasmic

molecule, forever rearranging its constitution afresh

and finding itself thus adapted to novel relations.

Thus arose the amphibia in the Carboniferous era, vis

itors only to the solid ground. From them came the
5+ MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

reptiles, their descendants, in the Permian, who, from

the temporary sojourners their fathers were, devel

oped into permanent denizens of the new abode.

From this aboriginal crawling out upon terra firma

the organism progressed until finally it came to stand

erect and call itself a man.

Changed habitat made all the later strides in intelli

gence possible. The very sameness that rendered the

sea so inviting a habitat to simple souls, made evolu

tion beyond a certain point difficult, if not impossible.

Change might develop in the organism, but it would

find little encouragement to survive in its surround

ings.

Effect of It was the variety of conditions possible on land

environment t • - . .... , that gave rise to varying environment, and this in turn upon evolu- o / o *

tion. that have conduced remained forever to organic of adifferentiation. low, cold-bloodedLifeorder wouldif

it had been constrained to continue in the sea. What

made the broad ocean so excellent a nursery curtailed

it as a field for action later on.

To appreciate how unsuited to high development

of organism the sea was, we need only think how poor

a place it is for bringing up a family. Fishes cast

their spawn upon the waters, and leave the hatching

of the eggs to chance. If one in a million survives

this unparental treatment, it is all that nature expects.

The fish has done well, and its tribe increase. This is
THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE 55

taking but little thought for the morrow. The poor

little egg is homeless as well as parentless from the

start, lacking even that attenuated appreciation of home

surroundings Gallicly expressed as mal du pays, since

one tract of ocean so dishearteningly resembles another.

Very different is the care of their young exhibited

by the higher land inhabitants, the mammalia. With

them the mother begins by carrying the egg in the

safest possible way, as a part of herself, until it has

become to all intents and purposes an animal on its

own account. It then sees the light, but not the limit

of fostering care. She keeps it by her, suckling it till

it is able to procure food for itself. Even then its

guardianship is not in the highest forms foregone. In

man parental help continues up to the point when the

young is full grown, and even after that, on through

life, till the next generation has become the dominant

one of its day.

To say the least, life was an arduous, adventurous

career amid the inhospitable homelessness of the sea.

And this is shown not only by the leaving it at the

first opportunity by those who could, but by only

degenerates returning to it again. Only the poor

relatives of the mammalia —the porpoises, dugongs,

and whales —are now to be found there, having taken

to it through stress of circumstances, elbowed off the

better ground by their stronger associates.
56 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

That the outcasts still exist, however, proves the

tenacity and adaptability of life. It goes everywhere,

takes up with what it can get, and turns the least pro

pitious milieu to its own ends. For life is more univer

sal than is our usual conception of it. Our limited

personal experience we take as measure of the whole,

and say, " Thus far and no farther." But nature

knows no such limit to her own possibilities. And

we are gradually, one may almost say reluctantly,

learning them of her. Go where he will upon the

earth, man finds life of some sort there before him.

He discovers new continents or seas merely to find

out that they had been discovered by some poor rela

tives long ago, and appropriated by them. From

burning Saharas to polar snows no spot is exempt

from colonization, though some teem with immigrants

more than others. In altitude it is the same story as

in latitude. If man ascends, he meets with forms of

life that rise with greater facility than he, and inhabit,

too, what they explore. In descent it was until re

cently thought otherwise. One region was supposed

free of such intrusion and to have remained as virginly

azoic as when originally formed —the unstirred abysses

of the vast oceanic basins, all that constitutes the great

deep beyond the immediate vicinity of the shore and

be]ow the hundred-fathom line. No life existed, man

was sure, in the depths of the sea.
THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE 57

Fifty years ago the absence of both flora and fauna Deep-sea life from the deep seas was not only taken for granted, but ' ouf, 'IT"

r / O ' possible fifty believed on the most conclusive grounds to have been }•<*" agoproved inevitable. The first of these was the enor

mous pressure to which any organisms resident there

would be subjected. From the weight of the super

incumbent water the pressure would increase at the

rate of one ton per square inch for every thousand

fathoms of descent.

Consequently, at the bottom of the Atlantic, it would

be from two and a half tons to three and three-quarters

tons per square inch, and in the greater depths of the

Pacific from three and one-half to nearly five tons.

On bodies at the earth's surface, living only under the

ocean of air, it is but fifteen pounds to the square inch.

From fifteen pounds to ten thousand is a far cry, and

one it staggers imagination to understand. It was

only too easily argued as prohibitive to life. Any

organism there, it was thought, would simply be

crushed out of existence.

The second bar was the total extinction of light. Extinction Below two hundred fathoms no sunlight could pos- g t*

sibly penetrate. So it was calculated from the rate

at which light is absorbed at lesser depths, and the

calculation was amply borne out by observation.

Experiments by Fal and Sarasin have fully demon

strated the unassailability of this deduction. On a
58 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

sunny day in March they exposed bromo-gelatin

plates for ten minutes at a depth of two hundred

fathoms without a trace of reaction. To those who

know by experience how quickly plates fog in a dark

room, this immunity speaks for the more than Stygian

darkness which must there prevail.

Now, the lack of light is distressing enough to any

fauna, but to flora it is absolutely preclusive, since

light is the necessary stimulus to chlorophyl reaction,

and thus to the growth of the plant. But if all plants

be absent, animals, it was confidently concluded, must

be absent, too, since they could not live without plants,

being unable to fashion their food out of inorganic

substances. They must eat plants or other animals

that have eaten plants. Therefore, after the stronger

inhabitants of these abyssal depths, supposing any

there, had eaten the weaker, they must themselves die

of starvation.

These arguments seemed unanswerable, to say noth

ing of the abyssal cold. For the temperature falls as

the thermometer descends until at a depth of a few

hundred fathoms in the unbarriered ocean basins it

reaches a temperature of 340 F., whence a slow falling

ing-point further brings of fresh it towater. 290 F., or actually below the freezDwp-srj life. When it had thus been conclusively proved that

no life could exist at the bottom of the sea, deep
THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE 59

 

Specimen of a Deep-sea Fish

This specimen was obtained by the Challenger Expedi

tion from a depth of about 500 fathoms (3000 ft.) and

illustrates life formerly thought impossible.

sea dredges were invented, and no sooner were they

let down than, behold ! they came up teeming with

life. Fish and

crustacea, mollusks and echinoderms — life,

in short, of all

the usual pelagic

kinds from pro

toplasmic mole

cules to marine monsters —were found to inhabit the

abysmal depths. What could not be, just was.

The abyssal fauna thus disclosed proved to be in

comfortable circumstances, in spite of the supposed

impossibility of its existence at all. It had, it is true,

no visible means of subsistence, but it subsisted, never

theless. It was as widespread as it was abundant, en

joying a distribution unknown on land. The same

species were found off the coast of Europe and about

New Zealand, in the arctic seas as well as under the

tropics. This was because of the uniformity of the

habitat. Only seven degrees of difference in temper

ature distinguished one part of its huge domain from

another. There was therefore no bar to migration ;

indeed, the sameness of the surroundings must have

insidiously led the inhabitants on. A species was thus

induced to become world-wide, while on land, even
6o MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

supposing a pathway to exist, the journey from one

hemisphere to the other involved enduring a shift of

i00° F. or 1500 F. of temperature, made as it would

be from winter in the one to summer in the other.

No such temporalities as seasons disturb the abyssal

pelagic denizens, nor can locality have meaning to

them, even though they be associated with the bot

tom, which is only ooze or mud —ooze, the burialground of protozoa, and mud, the siftings of volcanic

lava mixed with meteoric dust. One place is like

another, bearing no earmark, and a fish returning to

the very spot of its nativity would not know it again.

Time and space are alike annihilated there, and both to

sense made limitless. If any creatures can feel infinity,

it must be these abyssal denizens of the deep sea.

Blindness. hasThecontrived supposedto impossibilities surmount. Theof their pressure abodepermeates Nature

them, and their parts are constructed to stand the

strain. Yet so little change has been needed to adapt

them that it is virtually imperceptible to the cursory

eye. In another way Nature has accommodated them

to the illumination of their habitat. She has let them

get on without seeing or she has provided them with

lamps. By supplying senses other than the eye, and

allowing the animals to become blind, Crustacea and

fishes alike, she has made them independent of the

darkness. Or she has done for them what man has
THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE 61

accomplished for himself —supplied artificial illumina

tion. That a blind fauna should exist in a vast do

main with not so much as a one-eyed specimen for

king, is interesting and suggestive of what Nature can

contrive to do without, but that she should undertake

to light the region, and that by means of the creatures

themselves, is yet more surprising.

But this is precisely what she does, and with some- Phospho-

. . . . ... . .. . • i • rescent organs. thing akin to electricity, each animal carrying with it

its own machine. Whole tracts are brilliantly lighted

up by the inhabitants till they must resemble London

or Paris seen by night, only that in these thoroughfares

of the abysses of the sea the passers-by provide the

illumination, each, as it swims about, swinging its own

lantern as in old Japan, though better —a phospho

rescent arc-light, as one may say. These devices are

evident even when the fish, no longer living, reaches

the surface in the dredge ; much more brilliant they

must be in their native wastes of abysmal water, where

all is cold and dark and silent round about, as impres

sive as a mountain top at midnight, standing con

fronted with the stars.

How thoroughly the living by artificial light is now Lesson of the

ft , i r fishing fishes. angling ofin the consequence fish practised their themselves everyday asas angler-fish a —means existence, fish that of—livelihood will fish theserve andoccupation are byto known certain show.or
 

Specimen of a Deep-sea Fish

62On theMARS surface ASthe THE genus ABODE given to this OF profession LIFE are

furnished with a long tentacle which, rising from the

back, curves over

by its weight till

the end, which is

lobed into a red

bunch not unsuggestive of a

. tempting worm,

dangles right in

This globular specimen is an angler-fish, which has frnn* nf the

kept to the habit of angling, but has changed its bait. Smaller From the Challenger fry, attracted Expedition.by this bright bait, fsher's dart forward mOuth.

to gulp it, and are themselves snapped up by the

expectant jaws.

Now, of these angler-fish one species proves to in

habit the abyssal zone ; and this relative of the anglers

above, instead of the red worm-like bait at the end of

its rod, which would be useless in the Stygian darkness

thereabout, has replaced it by a brilliant, phosphores

cent light, which lures as certainly to destruction.

Adaptation could offer no more expressive example

of the insistence of life, even to the preservation of

the very type, than this keeping of the fishing habit

with only a change of bait.

After such an ingenious transformation, the substitu

tion of lungs for gills when the aquatic animal changed

 
THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE 63

into the terrestrial one, seems a forthright step in

comparison. The swim-bladder, discarded when the

descendants of the upper relatives of these animals

emerged, leads to some curious experiences at the

bottom of the sea —ones that induce new outlooks

on life, and yet are the result of conditions alone. To

us who live upon the solid crust, pulled downward

constantly by gravity, danger lies in falling over preci

pices or down holes. Abyssal fish are exposed to no

less a risk, but of precisely the opposite character —

that of tumbling upward. Within limits, the fish

has control of his

swim-bladder, but

if in the excite

hemntgetsofCarried the chase bv Obtained Specimenby theofChallenger a Deep-seaExpedition. Fish

impetuosity farther up than he intended, he may reach

regions where, for the lessened pressure, he can no

longer control its distention, and is swept against his

will higher and higher till his organs burst from the

released strain. The fish tumbles upward, and is

killed by the fall.

As for the flora, it simply does not exist. Never

theless, the absence of a local food supply is not fatal

to these denizens of the deep. It would seem that

what descends to them from the waters above is

enough, meagre as it may be. They feed off" the
64 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

crumbs that fall from the better-spread table of their

littoral relatives, as is shown by their being the

descendants of emigrants thence. For most of them

have relatives still living in shallow water, the oldest

abysmal species not dating farther back than Cretaceous

times.

Cosmic char- From such world-wide distribution of life over the

acter of life. .

r,arth under conditions which are antagonistically

unlike, we realize its essentially cosmic character

experimentally, if we may so put it, as well as

theoretically. Modifications of it follow any and

every change of environment, but nature strives to

the last gasp to bring forth this, her highest

product.

Each planet sets a different stage for the play of

spontaneous variation. In no two is the scenery the

same, but this is not essential to organic origin and

growth. Nor are many of the environmental circum

stances prohibitive, though at first they seem fatal to

our particular species of life. Because a man, if sud

denly transported to Mars, would gasp and die, is as

beside the point in any inquiry into the existence

of life there as the fact that no woman ever was the

mother of a monkey is irrelevant to a discussion on

the origin of man. We have here been evolving in

keeping with the shapings of a certain environment.

To suppose that we could instantly prove adapted
THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE 65

to another quite diverse is to mistake the process

upon which life depends.

Indeed, our most commonplace actions would there

seem phantasmagoric. Personal experience of Mars,

on the surface of which gravity is only three-eighths

the Earth's, would take on a character akin to the

grotesque. Everything there would become unnatu

rally light : lead would weigh no more than stone with

us, stone than water, each substance appearing to be

transmuted into something other than itself. It would

prove at once a world imponderable, etherealized.

Our actions would grow grandific. For with little

effort we should accomplish the apparently impossible,

endowed with an effectiveness increased sevenfold.

Lastly, everything would take its time. Water would

flow with hesitant and lazy current, and falling bodies

sink with graceful moderation to the ground. After

our first paranceac wonder, it would certainly impress

us as a world as slow as it was flat.

Our very senses would seem estranged. Sight,

indeed, and taste would be the only ones not to be

shifted in their point of view. Touch, hearing, even

smell, would all suffer a space-change and prove quite

other than we know them now. We should be any

thing but at home. But this does not imply that life

of some form would not. For consider how our

own world must seem other than we know it to every
66 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

animal upon its face. To the ant it stands a very

different habitat from what the elephant conceives it.

The grass-spires which tower as trees to the one are

trodden unnoticed underfoot by the other. Nor is it

matter of mere magnification alone. The former feels

both strength and limitations the latter quite ignores.

The ant scales his grass-stem with an ease and assur

ance we should not know on trees, and falls off to the

ground, if need be, completely unscathed from a rela

tive height that would terminate our careers forthwith.

But though modified in feeling by size of habitant

and modified in fact by size of habitat, life would go

on superior to such detail were the planet only sizable

enough to furnish it with its necessities.

So far as we have evidence, life is an inevitable

outcome of the cooling of a globe, provided that

globe be sufficiently large. For life did not reach

this earth from without. No fanciful meteorite bore

it the seeds which have since sprouted and overrun its

surface. Meteorites gave it life, indeed, but in the

more fundamental way in which all nature's processes

are done, by supplying it with matter only from which

by evolution life arose. Of this we may be absolutely

certain from the fact that while meteors were falling

upon it in any numbers, they were forming its mass,

the full heat of which had not yet been evolved by

their impact and subsequent condensation. The heat
THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE 67

that thence ensued was excessive, many fold greater

than sufficed to kill any germs that might have come

to it housed in the meteorites themselves. Thus the

action due the meteorites after they came must have

annihilated any organic possibilities they may have

brought with them. Those arriving after the heat

had waned enough to make survival possible found

life already started, since protoplasm formed the mo

ment cooling permitted of it.

The proof that life was here spontaneously evolved

appears at every stage in its history, not only in its

origin, but at every step of its progress upward where

a marked departure occurs from its previous course.

It and the environment are observed to have changed

together. Two short parallel columns, the one show

ing the changes that have occurred in the habitat, the

other those supervening in the habitant, will make

this not simply clear, but striking. As effective as

the well-known deadly parallel of oratorical utterances,

this life-giving one reaches the same certainty through

the probabilities disclosed.

Occasion of this vital parallelism occurs at the very

start. Indeed, we may go back of this and note

agreement before the start. For until the conditions

were such as could support life, no life appeared.

This is the first coincidence. Another follows on its

heels with the dawn both of conditions fit for some
68 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

existence and of that existence itself. The waters

were its birthplace. No other portion of the surface

could then have offered it a home, and nowhere ex

cept in the sea is it then found.

The simultaneity of each new birth and each new

cradle crops up again when a new field arose by the

making of the land. As soon as this was suitable,

plants appeared to take possession of it, and from

that time on neglected more and more the sea.

The fourth parallel is found in the significant fact

that the edible plants and the plant-eaters made their

debut on the scene together in Miocene times, the

world having got along without both before that

epoch. This entry, hand in hand, so to speak, De

Lapparent, the great French geologist, does not hesi

tate to link logically, and to regard the one as the

necessary complement of the other. If this were not

the case, there is certainly no reason why they should

appear at the same instant of time. Food evokes its

eater in fact as definitely as in phraseology.

The last of this procession of coincidences, man,

came on the scene at the time when the cooling of the

globe rendered his own extension possible at the least

expense to himself. His brain allowed him to take

advantage of conditions less intrinsically favorable

than other animals could endure. His mind clothed

his body and gave him fire, and with these two prod
THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE 69

ucts he sallied forth into a world where antagonists

were chiefly climatic, with which he was fitted to cope.

Thus all along the line we perceive that life and

its domicile arose together. The second is necessary

to the first and the first is always sufficient to the

occasion. The coincidence of the possibility and its

seizure, of the posse and the esse, seems to be a gen

eral principle of evolution. Endless variation is con

stantly in progress, and this variation takes advantage

of any opportunity so soon as it occurs. Life but

waits in the wings of existence for its cue, to enter

the scene the moment the stage is set.
CHAPTER III

THE SUN DOMINANT

Transition. theTheentrance passingofofthetheSunsupremacy upon theof scene its ownas the heat,domand

inant power in its life, mark the next stage in a

planet's history.

On Earth the transition from self-support to solar

dependence began with the first symptoms of atmos

pheric clearing in the time of the great reptiles. The

clouds that had veiled the whole Earth in the paleo

zoic period then began to dissipate ; though it was

probably not until much later that the sky approached

the pellucid character we know. The Earth's own

cooling thus first let in the Sun. .

That such must have been our Earth's history we

gather from the other planets ; that it actually was so

we discover from the records of the Earth itself. For

from the fossils embedded in its rocks we learn that

when the Triassic strata, more familiarly known as the

New Red Sandstone, were laid down, gymnosperms,

cycads, and conifers had replaced the cryptogams of

the primary age. These plants require more light

than ferns. Though technically called flowering
THE SUN DOMINANT 71

plants, they yet lacked flowers to catch the eye. Still,

they demanded more sunshine than their predecessors,

and thus testify to the purifying air caused by the

gradual cooling of the surface and the consequent less

abundant generation of cloud. That the Sun had not

grown more insistent, but the Earth more open-eyed,

the latitudinal character of the cooling shows. For it

was not the absolute lowering in warmth, but the

zonal differentiation of temperature that then set in,

which is the noticeable thing. The tropics were as

before ; the climate was changing slowly toward the

poles. Climatic zones began to belt the Earth.

In the next mesozoic division, the Jurassic, the

corals, by dropping down the latitudes as time went

on, speak of continued refrigeration. Tropic, tem

perate, and frigid regions began to belt the Earth.

But zones were not yet well established, as the pres

ence of the same cycads in Mexico and Franz Josef

Land suffices to attest. Corals still grew in latitude

55° N.

With Tertiary times came in the seasons. Before The sun

ssscrts itself this the Earth knew them not, though its axial tilt was

the same as now. Their advent is registered for us

in the changed vegetation they induced. For their

presence is witnessed by the coming in of deciduous

trees, which make their first appearance in its preced

ing strata, the lower Cretaceous, and spread and
72 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

flourished in the Eocene, Miocene, and Pliocene eras.

The northern zones had now grown so cold that vege

tation had to hibernate in the winter months. Mean

while we mark the palms successively descend the

parallels in search of heat. In the Eocene —the

dawn of the recent —already they are lower than in

earlier epochs ; in the Oligocene, the next age, their

northern limit is the smaller fifties ; they become

rarer there in the Miocene ; and in the Pliocene they

have virtually disappeared from northern Europe.

With increase in light went hand in hand decrease in

warmth, which shows that the Earth had been the

source of the earlier torrid climate. Its seas and con

tinents were both cooling off.

The Sun was slowly asserting his position as the

great giver of both light and heat, and the world as we

know it was beginning to be.

This change in dependence from Mother Earth to

distant Sun ushered in the reign of beauty in the

world. We live in the colored supplement of our

globe's history, the time when the pigments were put

on ; and this because as fashioner the Sun has replaced

the Earth. Though they bear no relation to us, the

gorgeous tints of blossom, butterfly, and bird that so

delight the eye were called into being bv the sunbeams

themselves ; while the descendants of the plants that

were beholden chiefly to the Earth —the fungi, mosses,
THE SUN DOMINANT 73

and brakes —are sombre browns and greens, and

flourish only in the shade. A few indeed have

adapted themselves to the new conditions, but the

greater part still pathetically cling to the world in

which they were brought up —a world (except in

corners) long since passed away.

Since a general clearing of its sky is a regular step Mars betray* in a planet's development, we should expect to find a e,same

* r ' r evolution.

cloudless, transparent air in the case of a planet as

relatively old as Mars. For thus a body opens its

eyes to the cosmos. Now, this is precisely what we

do find. The aspect of Mars shows that it has thus

waked to the universe about it. In fact, such was the

very first of its characteristics to be made known to

the earth, being the one by which the others were re

vealed. Without it we had never made acquaintance

with this other world in space.

Viewed under suitable conditions, few sights can

compare for instant beauty and growing grandeur with

Mars as presented by the telescope. Framed in the

blue of space, there floats before the observer's gaze a

seeming miniature of his own Earth, yet changed by

translation to the sky. Within its charmed circle of

light he marks apparent continents and seas, now ram

ifying into one another, now stretching in unique ex

panse over wide tracts of disk, and capped at their

poles by dazzling ovals of white. It recalls to him
74 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

his first lessons in geography, where the Earth was

shown him set ethereally amid the stars, only with an

added sense of reality in the apotheosis. It is the

thing itself, stamped with that all-pervading, indefin

able hall-mark of authenticity in which the cleverest

reproduction somehow fails.

In color largely lies this awakening touch that im

bues the picture with the sense of actuality. And

very vivid are the tints, so salient and so unlike that

their naming in words conveys scant idea of their con

cord to the eye. Rose ochre dominates the lighter

regions, while a robin's-egg blue colors the darker ;

and both are set ofF and emphasized by the icy white

ness of the caps. Nor is either hue uniform ; tone

relieves tint to a further heightening of effect. In

some parts of the light expanses the ochre prevails

alone ; in others the rose deepens to a brick-red, suf

fusing the surface with the glow of a warm, late after

noon. No less various is the blue, now sinking into

deeps of shading, now lightening into faint washes that

in places grade off insensibly into ochre itself, thus

making regions of intermediate tint the precise borders

of which are not decipherable by the eye.

Superimposed upon its general opaline xomplexion

are now and then to be seen ephemeral effects. At

certain times and in certain places warm chocolatebrown has been known to supplant the blue. Often,
 . .;

4

,.3 !

.d' 

THE SUN DOMINANT 75

too, cold white dots are scattered over the disk, daz

zling diamond points that deck the planet's features

to a richness beyond the power of pencil to portray.

So minute are they that good seeing is needed to dis

close them. It is at such moments that color best

comes out. To those who know the sun only as

golden and the moon as white, even in its color

scheme Mars would stand forth a revelation.

It is easy to travel in thought over the strange

land thus displayed below you. For though you

gaze up into the sky, you still look down upon its

ground, and follow consciously or unconsciously the

configuration of its surface with cartographic eye, now

led by some apparent bay to run with it up into the

continent, now witched by the spirit of exploration

toward some island, as it seems to be, set remote in

the midst of the sea. But whether you purpose it or

not, nature, taking the matter out of your hand, de

cides it for you. For presently you perceive your

point of view not to be quite what it was. The bay

in question, as well as the island, has slightly changed

its place upon the disk, while the two have kept their

mutual relation unaltered. A few minutes more and

the shift has increased, and then you become aware

of what is taking place: this other world is turning on

itself, as turns our own, rotating from west to east as

it rolls along its orbit about the sun.
76 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

Up over the rim of the disk rises a marking, to

swing in time across the centre, and then on out of

sight round the other limb. The one horizon marks

the sunrise-line upon the planet, the other the sunset

one, and in its course between the two the place has

 

Two Views of the Sous I^acus Region of Mars, One Hour ai*art,

July 26, 1907 (the One to the Left the Earlier), showing the

Rotation of the Planet. North is at the top

had its Martian day. Unsuspectedly, but no less

potently for that, the act of such withdrawal only whets

curiosity the more. What perchance might have

wearied had it remained forever there, gains an added

glamour from the fact that it is gone. But, more than

this, it gives an earnest of yet further fields to be

explored. From the circumstance of turning comes

promise that other regions will later be displayed, and

as the observer watches, the predicted comes to pass.

One longitude after another turns the corner, rounds

into view, and slowly swings into the meridian plane.
THE SUN DOMINANT 77

Objects, grown familiar, give place to others that are

new. Sitting alone in midnight vigil in his silent

dome, the astronomer thus mutely circumnavigates

another world.

The cloudlessness of the planet's sky alone makes

such travel possible. Were it not for the unobstructed

view, exploration of the sort would be out of the ques

tion. Were Mars not an old planet, corroborating by

absence of cloud the general course of planetary devel

opment, our knowledge of it had been slight. To

begin with, its lack of covering enables us to mark

the permanency in place of the planet's features, and

from such permanently to time the planet's axial

rotation. This gives us knowledge of the planet's

day and furnishes means to measure it. This day

proves to differ in duration little from our own,

being 24 hours, 40 minutes long, instead of 24

hours. In the next place its scantiness of atmos

pheric apparel discloses the tilt of the axis to

the planet's orbital plane, a relation which causes

the seasons of the year. Now the Martian tilt,

as well as the Martian time of rotation, turns

out to be singularly like our own, being, in fact,

24° * as against 23^° for the Earth. Thus the

Martian seasons counterpart ours. The year of

* Still later measures at Flagstaff make this even smaller, 130 13', —or actually a

little less than ours. (See note 18. )
78 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

Mars, however, is twice ours in length, which, joined

to great eccentricity of orbit, gives it diversifiedly long

seasons. Thus, in the northern hemisphere, spring

lasts 199 days, summer 183, autumn 147, and winter

158, while in its southern hemisphere the figures stand

reversed. The numbers have more than academic

importance, for absolute length is as vital a factor in a

season's influence as the fact of the season itself.

Much may be brought to pass in twice the time which

could not develop in the shorter period. And it is

not a little interesting that precisely this possibility

actually turns out to be vital in the vegetative economy

of the planet's year.

The thin theAbsence plaet's ofair,11 cloudof which speaks,wetoo, haveofother the thinness evidence ofas

well. Perhaps the best proof of a relatively thin air

is the lack of intrinsic brilliancy of the Martian disk,

its "albedo," as it is called. This is only 27 per cent of

absolute reflection, as against 92 per cent for Venus.

Now, a thick air, even if clear, —indeed, because clear,

—would cast a luminous veil over the planet's face

due to dust or vapor, as it does with Venus, dimming

its features. Such is not the case with Mars.

Of twilight, therefore, there should be less, and

certain observations made at Flagstaff in 1894 seem to

prove this. The refractive medium of air which on

Earth calls the Sun earlier in the morning, and keeps

atmosphere

of Mars.
THE SUN DOMINANT 79

 

The North Polar Cap of Mars at its Least Extent

him up later at night than would otherwise be the

case, is not so potent on Mars. Day there enters with

greater abruptness, and lapses into more sudden dusk.

Then comes a night when the stars stand forth with

an insistency unknown on earth.

That some air exists is, however, patent, both directly

from the limb-light that fringes the circlet of the disk
80 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

and inferentially from the changes that we mark in

progress on the planet's face. For change of itself

implies an atmosphere.

The polar white Firstcapsof that the phenomena bonnet the toMartian betray poles this air ; forwerein the

person of these patches transformation was first recorded

upon the Martian disk. Their position, together with

<aps of Mars. The South Polar Cap of Mars at its Greatest Extent

 
THE SUN DOMINANT 81

their seasonal wax and wane, pointed them out for

polar snows gathered during the Martian winter and

melting with the Martian spring.

That the polar caps are composed of snow, or,

rather, hoar-frost, suggests itself to any one who

carefully scans the planet. But to prove it was not

so easy. Fortunately,

a phenomenon which

accompanies it turned

out, when rightly

reasoned on, a touch

stone to its character.

As the cap melts, it

is seen to be girdled

about by a dark-blue

band, deeper in tone

than any other bluegreen area on the disk. This belt developed the

peculiar property of retreating with the cap as the

latter shrank, maintaining throughout its attendant

post. The phenomenon was first seen by Beer and

Madler, but it was not till 1894 that its signihcance

was seized.

Clearly the outcome of the melting cap, it disposed

by that fact of the suggestion that the caps might be

solid carbonic acid that freezes at 1090 F. into a sub

stance not unlike snow. For carbonic acid, under

G

 

Drawing of Mars, April 8, 1907,

showing the Dark belt that gir

DLES the Snow During its Melting
8z MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

pressures of one atmosphere, or less, such as would be

the case on Mars, passes instantly from the gaseous

into the solid state. Not so water-vapor. Here,

then, was a telltale bit of behavior. The blue belt

proclaimed the presence of a liquid. Thus carbonic

 

From drawings, July 20 and 22, before and after the event.

Early Winter Snow-storm in the Northern Hemisphere of Mars,

1907 (North at the Bottom). Martian Dates : October 22, Lefthand Drawing; October 23, Right-hand Drawing

acid could not be concerned, and the substance com

posing the caps was therefore snow. For no other,

that we know of, dons their snowy aspect with change

of state.

The behavior of the cap thus affords intrinsic proof

of its constitution. Since this was determined, another

line of argument has given extrinsic evidence of the

same thing. This is the evaluation of the surface

temperature of the planet recently made for the first

time with any approach to precision.
THE SUN DOMINANT 83

The stronghold of doubt as to the habitability of The question Mars has always been the difficulty of accounting for °n^r""t

a temperature there high enough to support life.

From its own bodily heat at the present time the

planet itself, like our own earth, can contribute to the

surface temperature no appreciable amount. The

necessary caloric must all come from the sun. Now,

because the planet was half as far again from the sun

as the earth, and because light and heat diffuse in

versely as the square of the distance, —a candle two

feet away giving only one-fourth the light of one a

foot off, —it was supposed that Mars must receive

only four-ninths the warmth that the earth gets, which

would render its temperature terribly low.

But the receipt of radiant energy is not so forth

right as this. To begin with, the bundle of rays from

the sun striking the planet is subject to two adventures

at the very threshold of its planetary career. A part

of it is at once reflected back into space from the body

it strikes —from the air first, then from the planetary

surface. But the reflected light or heat does not go to

warm the body at all. Strange to say, this important

fact had never been taken into account until the

present investigation of the subject, which led to a

completely different outcome from what had previously

been supposed. Too technical for exposition here,

one or two points in it may be mentioned! First, the
84 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

proportionate amount of the reflected light-rays which

reach an observer stationed on another planet measures

the relative brightness of that planet as seen by him.

This per cent per square unit of surface at distance

unity is what is called the planet's albedo. Now the

albedo of the different planets has been found by more

than one observer from investigations unconcerned

with our present subject, the only gap in the series

being that of our own earth. The latest determina

tion by Miiller is : —

Mercury 0.17

Venus 0.92

Mars 0.27

Jupiter 0.75

Saturn (Struve) 0.78

Uranus 0.73

Neptune 0.63

Our own earth's albedo is lacking from the table

because we cannot see ourselves as others see us, and

are consequently somewhat in the dark as to our own

appearance. By suitable deduction, however, from the

brightness of sunlight at different altitudes above the

surface of the earth, it is possible to get some idea of

it, and from this a modest estimate puts it as at least

.75. So that we are not so dull as we thought.

Thus we get the amount of radiant energy received
THE SUN DOMINANT 85

from the visible part of the sun's rays. There are also

rays too long to be perceived by our eyes, and these

must also be considered in a determination of the

whole. The bolometer invented by Langley enables

us to do this, and so to obtain the fraction of the

total incident energy which goes to warm the body.

In the case of the earth it proves to be 41 per cent

of the whole ; and in the case of Mars, 60 per cent.

Here, then, we have at once a serious modification

of a calculation based on distance alone.

But this is not all. The clearness of the Martian The clear

sky comes in to abet the greater transmission of its

air. From dawn till dusk, day after day in the sum

mer season, and largely in winter, the sun shines out

of a heaven innocent of cloud. No shield of the

sort, and only a little screen of air, tempers its

beams to the soil held up to it. Such an exposure

far exceeds anything we have on earth ; for with us,

even in the tropics, clouds gather as soon as the

heating grows excessive, and cool the air by plumps

of rain.

How much this means to a planet as far away

from the sun as Mars, will appear if we consider

what in this respect is the condition of the earth.

Over the earth as a whole, the proportion of actual

to possible sunshine for the whole year is 50 per

cent. That is, the sky is such that the sun shines
86 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

only half the time it might were there no clouds to

screen it.

On Mars the spring mistiness at the borders of

the polar cap is the only veiling the surface knows,

with the result that the percentage of sunshine

throughout the year is 99 per cent of the utmost

possible. This is somewhat reduced by the fact

that some light and heat of course is let in by the

clouds —and is kept in better, too.

Taking these different data, and using the most

recently determined relation of radiation to temper

ature (that of Stefan, which has been independently

deduced theoretically by both Boltzmann and Galitzine), we find that the mean temperature of the

surface air of Mars should be about 480 F. We

must not place too much credence in the actual fig

ures, for our knowledge of the laws of atmospheric

retention of heat is very uncertain, but the research

is enough to show that the above result is much

nearer the truth than the terribly cold ones. That

of the earth is only 60° F. ; so that the mean cli

matic warmth of the two planets is not very unlike,

and far within the possibilities of life for both.12

But the circumstances are even more favorable to

Martian life than this. For man does not live by

mean annual temperatures alone. In fact neither

he nor other animals in our temperate zones pay so
THE SUN DOMINANT 87

much heed to yearly averages as is sometimes sup

posed. Much more to the point with them is the

mean summer warmth they experience.

Now, in the summer-time, —that is, all the way Summer and

from some months after the winter solstice to some peratures.

months after the summer one, —more heat is ab

sorbed daily from the sun than is radiated out to

the stars at night. The surface temperature is then

constantly rising ; a fact patent when one stops to

think of it in this way, since June is warmer than

March, but that this means that the day's gain ex

ceeds the night's loss is commonly lost sight of.

The fact is pertinent to our present inquiry. For

the daily increment continues for half the year, and

the Martian year is twice our own in length. Its

total gain in summer over the mean would, other

things equal, rise to something like twice our own.

Instead of a temperature lift of 300, as with us, on

Mars it might well be 500, in spite of the thinner air.

That a thin air is compatible with great surface

heat the latest and most authoritative measures of

the heat of the moon's surface during the lunar day

interestingly corroborate. These measures are those

of Professor Very. With great care and thorough

ness this excellent investigator experimented on the

amount of heat radiated by different parts of the

moon at different times of the lunar day. He con
88 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

tinued the work Langley had begun to a much

finer point of precision. It used to be thought that

even at lunar midday the temperature of the moon's

surface must be below freezing because of its lack of

a retaining blanket of air. Very's latest conclusions

in the matter put a quite different aspect upon it.

In a letter of his to the writer he sums up his results

as follows : —

When the sun rises, no matter in what latitude, it is cold. I do

not venture to say how cold, but below the freezing-point. Not

until the sun has reached an altitude of I 50 in middle latitudes does

the temperature get above freezing. Then the heat mounts rapidly

until at the end of the first week of sunshine in dry regions near the

equator the rock surface is as hot as boiling water. As midday ap

proaches at the end of the second week, the scorching rocks attain

a temperature full 80° centigrade above the boiling-point of water

in regions under a vertical sun (3560 F. ). Having once become

heated, the rocky surface retains its heat to a great extent far into the

afternoon, the curve of falling temperature being perhaps a day and

a half of our time out of symmetry. Toward the end of the lunar

afternoon the fall of temperature is very rapid, and before the sun

sets, frost prevails, or at least temperatures which produce frost

wherever there is water-vapor to make the article which we call

" hoar-frost."

And this great heat occurs where there is virtually

no blanket of air ; and, what is even more striking,

its temperature maximum is not attained till a day

and a half after its greatest receipt of sunshine.
THE SUN DOMINANT 89

Now, when we turn from deduction to the picture Aspect of

. . Mars the planet presents, which, after all, is entitled to corroborative.

some consideration in statements about itself, we

confront what certainly seems a body in fairly easy

circumstances of temperature. In its summer the sur

face lies fully exposed to our gaze, and it assuredly

is not suffering from wholesale glaciation. On the

contrary, the phenomena point to something quite

the reverse. For weeks its arctic regions up to 86°

and 87° N. latitude are certainly above the freezingpoint, since the snow disappears. Probably they are

far above it, for in the polar caps we then behold a

shrinkage much greater than anything we similarly

experience on earth, part of which is due to less

depth of snow, but showing also that it is relatively

warmer there than here. Lower down the disk,

toward the equator, great dust-storms, like the si

mooms of our Sahara, sweep over portions of it at

times, hundreds of square miles in extent, convey

ing to the onlooker anything but a sense of chill.18

In winter the opposite state of things prevails. A

good sixth of the whole surface goes into winter

quarters as each autumn draws on. It stays so, too,

for some eight of our months on end, not to emerge

till the next Martian spring. A winter on Mars in

high latitudes has a polar complexion to it not wholly

pleasing to contemplate.
9o MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

But the idea that such a winter's counterpane be

tokens more than hibernation, and in any sense hazards

the existence of life, a moment's thought on our own

conditions of living will suffice to dispel. The great

nations of the earth, with scarce an exception, live half

the year in the earth's north polar cap, buried in snow

and hidden the greater part of the time from visual

communication with outside space. If Martian phi

losophers are of the pattern of some earthly ones, they

must incontrovertibly prove to their own satisfaction

the impossibility of our existence. Nevertheless, from

the fairly successful way in which we manage to sur

vive in open contravention of philosophy, we see that

it is not necessary even to suppose hibernation, fea

sible as nature finds that to be with insects, fishes, and

beasts, in order to tide an animal over from one period

of warmth to the next. An organism with or without

what we are pleased to call human intelligence is quite

capable of submitting to conditions which would, if

permanent, prove destructive to life, and of biding its

time to a more propitious season.

Summer the For, thanks to recent research, we now know that

life season. . . i n . • ti with animals generally it is the summer temperature,

not the winter one, that decides the question as to

whether life shall exist. An able investigation of the

United States Government Zoologist, Dr. Merriam,

made upon the region of the San Francisco peaks, in
THE SUN DOMINANT 9i

 

^TIMBER LINE ZONE [ JOOUOLAS FIR ZONE

1 6PRUCE ZONE %.'/,, ]'\ PINE ZONE

PINON ZONE

DESERT

Merriam's Mat of San Francisco Mountain and Vicinity, Arizona

Published in " North American Fauna, No. 3."
02 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

1889, brings this point out with great acumen. Its

pertinency to the problem before us commends it to

reference here.

In geographic and climatic position combined the

San Francisco Mountains of northern Arizona are

among the most interesting animal and vegetal habitats

 

The San Francisco Peaks

of the globe. They are what is left of a great crater of

Tertiary times, which, rising out of the plateau north

of the Arizonian desert, tower to 12,630 feet of alti

tude. The massif of this once volcanic cone sup

ports now many square miles of forest on its flanks,

and its plateau base is clothed with pine ; while girdling

it about, and cutting it off like an island from other
THE SUN DOMINANT 93

vegetation, stretch the arid wastes of the great Ameri

can desert.

This floral island is remarkable for being banded by Zonesofvegcsuccessive zones of trees, each distinctive and exclusive, I3"0" °

' * San Francisco and giving place the one to the other solely according Mountains.

 

Arizosa Desert View

to elevation. Starting from the desert forty miles

away, where sage-brush and cacti alone succeed in

managing an existence, the traveller enters at an eleva

tion of a mile and a quarter above the sea the initial

zone of scrub. Stunted at first, clumps of dwarf juni

per —cedars, as they are locally called — make their

appearance, and grow in size and vigor as he continues
94 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

to ascend. With them are soon associated another

form ofjuniper and the pifion, a small tree from twenty

to thirty feet in height. At about 7000 feet he en

counters the Pinus ponderosa, to which the juniper and

pinons then give way, and the whole aspect of the

 

t 4

TheE Douglas 6i Fir -

«nHI

tree vegetation changes. Here the stately pines pos

sess the land alone, save for a few white oaks on the

edges of the mesas. At 8500 feet the yellow pines

disappear, to be succeeded by the Douglas fir, the

Rocky Mountain pine, and the beautiful trembling

aspen. At 9500 feet this set of trees gives place to

yet another, and the traveller enters the western white

spruce zone, associated with which is the fox-tail pine,
THE SUN DOMINANT 95

the needles of which startlingly suggest a fox's brush.

At 10,500 feet these trees dwindle to dwarf specimens

of themselves, until at 12,000 feet they entirely lapse,

and naked rock stretches supreme to the summit. A

climb of 8000 feet from 5000 to 13,000 of elevation

has carried the observer through six zones ofabsolutely

distinct tree life, counterparts of the tropic, the tem

perate, the Canadian, the Hudsonian, the Arctic, which

he would have traversed had he journeyed from the

foot of the mountains northward to the pole.

To the higher slopes of the mountain every summer

deer troop from the lower plateaux where they have

passed the winter, to stay at these heights until

October's cold drives them down again ; while upon it

all the year round are to be found bear, which also go

up and down with the change in seasons. In addition

to these are wildcats and mountain lion, besides a

host of smaller mammals, squirrels, gophers, and the

like.

Merriam camped upon the peak in July, 1889, and Summer temstudied the habits of the animals at high elevations . J V* o minative or during the summer months, comparing the various Ufegenus and species found there with those known

northward in the world. Among other interesting re

sults he found that the survival of species is determined

not by the mean annual temperature of the locality or

by the winter minimum, but by the maximum temper-
96 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

ature prevailing during the short summer months. It

is in this season that the animals bring forth their

young, and his study showed that if they were suffi

ciently warm during the reproductive season, cold dur

ing the rest of the year mattered not. At the worst

they hibernated. Here, then, the fact of a few warm

weeks made life possible, outweighing the impossibility

of all the other long, cold, forbidding months. Fur

thermore, what is important to our present discussion,

Merriam found that temperature was more potent than

humidity, so long as they had any water at all.

This point in animal history has immediate bearing

upon the habitability of Mars ; for the Martian sum

mer is twice as long as ours, and, as we have seen, the

probable acme of warmth attained in it is by no means

small. It is by these attributes of its climate, and

not by its mean annual temperature, or by the great

cold its surface very possibly experiences in winter,

that its ability to support life must be judged.

Another point the presence of the animals on the

San Francisco Mountains serves to bring out —their

indifference to thinness of the air. The creatures

which dwell on the peak, or which visit it as a summer

resort, are members of the same species whose natural

home is at sea-level farther north. The deer are such

as one finds in the northern part of the United States ;

the bear are the same as those inhabiting the forests of
THE SUN DOMINANT 97

Canada and Labrador. Altitude takes the place of

latitude in sufficiently cooling the habitat to their ac

commodation. But it does this at the expense of air.

On the peak they dwell at elevations of 10,000 feet,

where the barometer marks only 18 inches, instead of

the 30 to which their relatives are accustomed. Yet,

in spite of living in atmospheric penury on the man

sard roof of the world, —for the mountain here is

steep, — they suffer no inconvenience, and seem totally

unaware that they are doing anything peculiar. Nor

have they seemingly changed in organic or even in

functional development. With the deer the lack of

special adaptation is equaled only by the lack of con

scious absence of it, and the animal is as much at home

as in the timber of the Minnesota woods.

That thinning of the air proves no bar to a species,

provided other conditions are the same, is further

shown on the high lands of the western United States.

The meadow-larks of the great plains rise with the

surface into the parks of the Colorado Rockies, with

an altitude of eight thousand feet, and are there as

much acclimated as at two thousand in the Kansas

prairies.

Now, if such a barometric range can be borne semi

annually without special modification by the organism,

how much more may not be accomplished by accom

modation, given a sufficiency of time ? Men who first

11
98 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

pitiably gasp, learn to endure, and finally, embrace, a

life of elevation. Quito, at ten thousand feet, has a

population who live as easily as their relatives at sealevel.

Owing to the thinness of the air, it has been cusiikc elevation, tomary to liken the conditions on Mars to those upon

Plateaux

hotter than

peaks at a

HIMALAYA. 

46-* North Latitude. j^ North Latitude. id-1 South Latitude.

From Geikie's " Elementary Lessons in Physical Geography." (The Macmillan

Company.)

Vertical Distribution of Climate on Mountains, showing how

Land-masses raise the Temperature

our highest mountain tops, where life finds it impos

sible to exist. But the analogy is misplaced. Mars,

with its level surface, is more like some vast plateau.

Now, that the temperature of a plateau exceeds that
THE SUN DOMINANT 99

of a peak at the same height, table-lands on the earth

make evident. Humboldt cited the Himalaya. On

the north side of this great range, both snow-line and

timber-line are three thousand feet higher than on the

south side, a climatic lift brought about by the

Tibetan table-lands on the north ; and this in spite

of the contrary effect of slope exposure.

But we may get instances nearer home. In scan

ning Merriam's chart Lowell was struck by a fact

 

l

ni

. MM ..,, 1

ft t2

*f ii * f

t

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1

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..-t ■ltorn CD won p.tioa iP-t PIR 10MC 3 HtlTCI zoni TiMtcn MM toil »ipmi icmi

Aficr a plate in " Nonh American fauna, No. 3/' U. S. Dcpt. of Agriculture, Division of

Ornithology and Mammalogy, by Dr. Merriatn.

Diagrammatic Profile of the San Francisco and O'Leary Peaks,

from Southwest to Northeast

The diagram shows the several life zones and the effects of slope exposure, but

also shows what is unnoticed by the monograph, the effect of a plateau upon

life. The location of the Lowell Observatory is indicated by the star.

unmentioned by Merriam. Superposed upon the

more evident dip of the zones down from the south
ioo MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

west to the northeast a divergence in this dip may be

recognized, the dip increasing as the zones mount. It

at once occurred to him that this must be due to the

mass of land upon which each rested. That, in short,

the isoflors rose relatively to the north because of the

/♦ly^Vyb. /Ufi^j ktk

 

Showing Effect of Plateau Elevation on Tree Zones —

Less Elevation

higher plateau base there. To test this he made a

series of camping trips this last summer, 1907, on

and about the peaks, measuring, with an aneroid

checked by trigonometric survey, the heights at

which the several species of trees grew and from his

data laying down the isoflors. The outcome was more

 
THE SUN DOMINANT IOI

striking when thus ca-rettilly done than it had been

in Merriam's map, and quite conclusive as to cause.

It is here presented to the reader in a series of charts.

In these charts not only does' the' dip decline less

the nearer the tree zone stands to the plateau, but in

*/** // 11* >. V

 

£.3&L ^*.s £- ,i~-

Showing Effect of Plateau Elevation on Tree Zones -

Greater Elevation

the nearest of all, the pine zone, the influence of the

northern plateau is actually sufficient to counteract

the opposite effect of slope exposure and cause the

isoflor to rise toward the north.

The explanation of the matter is not far to seek.
i02 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

2L '

* ,••

' Do. f*

l-"/*

 

'...wwW^w-

•ty*-~sMr.

MIA

s~r ^"' y

5'

•/ /IfS t'S* ••."'

*<-.1 ,4 f~~f '. J

7>Sr Jf .

,4*^ /r'*/*

/// /». 1

<*-•* '/'"

 

Diagrams of Two Craters showing Greatest Cold N.N.W.

Each bit of plateau helps warm its neighbor, and so

keeps a heat that else had radiated away. So much

for the effect of but a small plateau. If even a limyr
THE SUN DOMINANT 103

ited area of high ground can so far ameliorate the

temperature, how much more would be accomplished

were jt to become world-wide ?

That we do not find animal and vegetable life at

the tops of our highest mountains is due to other

cause than elevation ; namely, to the restricted nature

of the habitat upon the pointed needle of a peak, sep

arated by impassable gulfs from other equally limited

areas. The animal has no range of forage and no

chance of commerce with its kind. This is one rea

son for the absence of life upon isolated pinnacles.

Yet even so its presence proves surprising. On the

very pinnacle of the San Francisco peaks, at 1 2,630 feet,

the tracks of a chipmunk showed clearly in the snow

on the occasion of its ascent upon October 15. Another

exterminating cause is the wind that of necessity always

draws over a peak at the slightest provocation. The

consequent drain upon an animai's own heat when

made under low temperatures is fatal to life. Man can

endure 700 below zero F. if the air is still, but perishes

at 400 below under the least wind. Even a breeze, there

fore, is equivalent to a fall of 300 F. in the temperature.

By both temperature and appearance, then, water- water-vapor

vapor proves a constituent of the Martian atmosphere. « "

Now, the vapor of water is a light gas, the lightest of

the constituents of our own air, and, in consequence,

by the laws of gases, among the most difficult for a
io4 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

planet to retain. Its presence, therefore, in a planet's

gaseous envelope is of the nature of a guarantee that

less volatile associates are also to be found there.

These, in an increasing order of weight, are nitrogen,

oxygen, and carbonic acid gas. So we may con

clude that these are probably also to be found on

Mars.

But we are far from having to rely upon such infer

ence, well founded in principle as it is, for our knowl

edge of the existence of these important gases in the

atmosphere of the planet. Modern observation of a

quite unrelated class of features puts their presence

there upon a secure footing —a planting on the prem

ises of both feet instead of one by the logical body of

fact ; and that, too, by reason of a descent from the

air to the solid surface of the ground. It is the now

recognized constitution of one of the two great classes

of markings that diversify the disk which has given us

the necessary information. The blue-green regions

have proved themselves the sibyls in the case.

In form first, in color subsequently, the blue-green

areas commended themselves as seas and oceans to the

mind of the early areographers. Even Schiaparelli so

considered them. Nor at that stage of acquaintance

was the characterization at all far-fetched. But as

these seeming seas were better scanned, differences of

tint became apparent in them. This should have
THE SUN DOMINANT 105

shaken belief in their character, but so tenacious is

an idea when once it has taken root that the dis

covery awoke no doubt. The oceans were merely

spoken of as shallower in some places than in others,

as if thousands of square miles of water so few feet

deep that the bottom showed through did not of itself

need explanation.

Next, these very differences showed variation.

Areas as large as Great Britain, and often very

much larger, would lighten in the course of a few

weeks in a perfectly unmistakable manner. Indeed,

the greater part of the whole southern hemisphere of

the planet would thus doff one tone, and even tint,

to don another at surprisingly short notice, and this

without anything approaching a correspondingly sizable

darkening elsewhere.

When we set ourselves to consider the matter in the

light of what was seen, we perceive that such absence

of reciprocity is fatal to the theory of a liquid film.

For were the transformation some subtle shift of sub

stance, what one part lost, another must have gained.

Either transferred as water elsewhere or wafted away,

to be deposited as snow about the pole, the thing

should still be somewhere in the planet's aqueous

economy. Yet neither of these counterbalancing ef

fects was perceptible. As water it had vanished, and

the polar caps were not increased.
106 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

Vegetation weLeft, are led thus,towithout inquirea what marinethese character paches,to their whichname, both

in form and color ape water, can in reality be. If the

great blue-green regions be observed at intervals of a

few weeks, and the aspects they successively present

be recorded in drawings, intercomparison suffices to

make evident that the metamorphoses they experience

are periodic, and the period that of the planet's year.

The changes, then, are seasonal in cause. That is,

they depend upon the sun. And in proof of the

relation, their fading out is found to occur in winter,

when the sun is least operative, and their greatest

evidence in midsummer, when the sun is locally most

potent.

Now, there is only one thing, so far as we know,

thus obedient to the sun and indicative of its subser

viency by a change of hue from blue-green to ochre,

and that is vegetation. Both colors are self-accusa

tory. The first speaks of verdure in its prime, the

second of the change of the leaf to the sear and yellow

stage, just as it takes place in our own foliage on the

approach of autumn's frosts, indicating that its course

is run. Not otherwise could we observe it from

space, should we mark our own familiar earth change

color when its season's work was done.

Vegetation thus vouched for, the constitution of the

air becomes more certain. Besides water-vapor, oxy
THE SUN DOMINANT 107

gen and carbonic acid gas must both be present, and

undoubtedly nitrogen, too, since in the matter of

density it holds an intermediate position. To find

that the Martian air is made up of our old familiar

friends in the matter of gas is an important step to

acquaintance with what goes on upon that other world.

Though we are indebted for our knowledge of its

existence to the vegetation, which is visible while the

air is not, it is in fact the vegetation that is indebted

to it for being able to show at all.

Of organic existence there the main, or natural, fea- Mode of

tures of the planet's face could not be looked to for oflife

more disclosure. Indeed, the surprising thing is that

they should have disclosed so much. That the com

ing and going of vegetation should be visible across

the thirty-five million miles of space to which at its

least the gap separating us from Mars is reduced, is

little short of marvellous. As for a direct view of any

animal life the planet might support, it would be out

of the question. In a very different manner would

this reveal itself. Not through its body should we

be ware of it, but through manifestation of its mind.

By the material changes in the surface of a planet

wrought by the dominance of his mind over matter

would the other world-worker stand confessed. This

we shall realize if, from the point we have gained in

establishing the probable existence of such life, we go
108 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

on to consider its probable character. Such can be

done by reviewing the experience of our own planet.

From what has taken place on earth, we see that

cooling and complexity of organism have advanced to

gether. Life originated here as soon as the tempera

ture fell below the boiling-point, and it started in

water, the liquefying of which out of steam gave it at

once an essential factor of its substance and an environ

ment of the most easily satisfying kind.

An upward step in evolution occurred when life

stepped out upon the land. While less directly

favorable to life, the land was fraught with more pos

sibilities for organisms capable of turning them to

account. Brain was needed, and brain evolved.

Brain, indeed, now became the chief concern of

nature. The character of the habitat undoubtedly

brought this about through the prizes it offered the

clever, and the snuffing out to which it consigned the

crass.

For long the animal remained thus the creature

of its environment, its view restricted in both time

and space. Greater possibilities came in with man.

Doubtless his was no very dignified entry, though

something better than on all fours. Brain now finally

distanced brawn, and even in his savage state man

became a being that others feared. From thus stand

ing primus inter pares, he soon developed into first,
THE SUN DOMINANT 109

" with the rest nowhere." Fire and clothes raised him

to some independence of his surroundings, and slowly

he began to take possession of the earth. His breech

ing, the putting on by the race of the toga virilis, was

both an incident of his rise and part cause of it as well,

for it made him superior to climate. But the fertility

of brain, however humble in its beginning, which sug

gested the means of protecting the body, devised the

methods by which he was to subjugate the earth.

For some centuries now this has been his goal, un

conscious or confessed. The true history of man has

consisted not in his squabbles with his kind, but in his

steady conquest of all earth's animals except himself.

He has enslaved all that he could ; he is busy in ex

terminating the rest. From this he has gone on to

turn the very forces of nature to his own ends. This

task is recent and is yet in its infancy, but it is destined

to great things. As brain develops, it must take pos

session of its world.

Subjugation carries its telltale in its train ; for it

alters the face of its habitat to its own ends. Already

man has begun to leave his mark on this his globe in

deforestation, in canalization, in communication. So

far his towns and his tillage are more partial than com

plete. But the time is coming when the earth will

bear his imprint, and his alone. What he chooses,

will survive ; what he pleases, will lapse, and the land
no MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

scape itself become the carved object of his handi

work.

Equally applicable is this deduction to planets other

than the earth. Instead of its being true, as a recent

writer remarked, that " we cannot expect to see any

signs of the works of inhabitants of Mars if such ex

ist," precisely the opposite is the case. Until the ani

mal attain to dominance of his world, his presence on

it would not be seen. Too small in body himself to

show, it would be only when his doings had stamped

themselves there that his existence could with certainty

be known. Then and not till then would he stand

disclosed. It would not be by what he was, but

through what he had brought about. His mind would

reveal him by its works — the signs left upon the

world he had fashioned to his will. And this is what

I mean by saying that through mind and mind alone

we on earth should first be cognizant of beings on

Mars.
CHAPTER IV

MARS AND THE FUTURE OF THE EARTH

STUDY of Mars proves that planet to occupy

earthwise in some sort the post of prophet. For,

in addition to the side-lights it throws • upon our

 

 

Comparative Sizes of the Earth and Mars with the Polar Caps

of Both in their Springtime.

past, it is by way of foretelling our future. It enables

us to no mean extent to foresee what eventually will

overtake the earth in process of time; inasmuch as

from a scrutiny of Mars coming events cast not their

shadows, but their light, before.

It is the planet's size that fits it thus for the role

of seer. Its smaller bulk has caused it to age quicker

than our earth, and in consequence it has long since
its oceans.

passed 112 MARS through ASthatTHE stage ofABODE its planetary OF LIFE career which

the earth at present is experiencing, and has advanced

to a further one, to which in time the earth itself must

come, if it be not overwhelmed beforehand by other

catastrophe. In detail, of course, no two planets of

different initial mass repeat each other's evolutionary

history ; but in a general way they severally follow

something of the same road.

Mars has lost It is in the matter of water that Mars stands forth

as a prophet, and this in two ways : as polar ice and as

oceanic expanses.

The first of these has reference to our own glacial

epoch, a geologic phenomenon the strangeness and

seeming unaccountableness of which has grown as

scientists have contemplated it with more care. That

vast areas of the earth's northern hemisphere, and of

the southern, too, were at times covered by a continu

ous ice-sheet is a fact remarkable enough in itself, but

grown still more curious from the difficulty experi

enced in assigning it adequate cause. Cosmic cooling

of our planet will not explain it, certain as that cooling

is ; for the refrigeration was partial, and recurrent as

well. Croll tried to account for it, but ingenious as

his idea was, it will not hold water — in the shape of

ice —in the form in which he put it, and it is now

virtually abandoned by geologists, although it contains

considerable truth.
MARS AND FUTURE OF EARTH 113

Now, it is not a little interesting that Mars should

have something to say upon the subject —something

which throws light upon the phenomenon as a general

planetary process, and specifically upon its occurrence

on our earth. It is because Mars happens to present

precisely the astronomic conditions which form the

basis of Croll's theory, and at the same time shows

the exact opposite of the prescribed results, that its

evidence is valuable.

The relative length of a planet's seasons are deter

mined by the elliptic orbit the planet pursues. If the

axis be so tilted that summer of one hemisphere occur

when the planet is nearest to the sun and therefore also

moving swiftest, that summer will be short and hot,

while the corresponding winter will be long and cold.

This hemisphere will have seasons of extremes ; the

other reversely will have long, cool summers and

short, warm winters or seasons of means. The greater

the eccentricity of the orbit the greater the accentua

tion between the two hemispheres.

Glaciation would result from a greater deposition of

hoar-frost or snow in winter than the succeeding

summer's sun could melt. A lengthening of winter

at the expense of summer would seem, therefore, able

to bring it about. Now, a greater eccentricity in the

orbit of the earth than is the case to-day existed in the

past, and would produce just this effect. So Croll
ii4 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

argued that it had done so. Unfortunately for the

theory, Mars moves now in an orbit more eccentric

than that of the earth ever can have been, and the

nearest approach of the planet to the sun occurs, too,

not far from the summer solstice of its southern hemi

sphere, yet that hemisphere which should show glaciation not only does not, but comes farther from

doing so than the other. For while the northern cap

diminishes from 780 across to 6°, the southern

dwindles from 960 to nothing. This shows that

while for various reasons the longer winter results in

a greater deposition, the shorter but hotter summer

of its hemisphere more than melts it away.

Now, if we increase pro rata the precipitation over

the whole planet, we perceive that the extent of the

southern cap at its greatest will still more outdo the

northern one, and as the melting capacities of the two

summers are approximately constant quantities, a time

will come when the remains of the southern cap will

surpass that of the other, and glaciation ensue.14

Such passing by one cap of the other in the race

toward glaciation is bound to occur, whatever the eccen

tricity, if it be anything at all, provided the precipitation

be sufficient. On the other hand, not only no glaci

ation can result unless the precipitation exceed a certain

quantity, but in want of it the ice-cap is actually less

in the hemisphere where we should expect it, that of
MARS AND FUTURE OF EARTH 115

extremes, than in the other. Whatever the cause of

increased snowfall, the effect is the same. It is, then,

the amount of precipitation, however it be brought

about, and not increase of eccentricity, essential as

eccentricity is, which is the determining cause of an

ice age.

To perish by wholesale glaciation is not therefore

the inevitable doom of a planet. Unless water be in

abundance, secular cooling will not necessarily bring it

about, and Mars shows us

that a planet may wholly

escape such a termination

to its career by having pre

viously parted with suffi

cient moisture, and actually

enjoy an anti-glacial state

in its old age.

The thought leads us to

the second matter in which

the present state of Mars

foretells the future of the

earth. Not only does unhampered age I5 preclude the

possibility of a death by frost ; it tends to a death by

thirst by deprivation of water. As we saw when

reasoning upon the blue-green areas, Mars apparently

had seas in the past, though it possesses none to-day.

To the student of the planet the question at once

 

Lines in the Dark Areas of

Mars, showing that the

Latter are not Seas.

From a drawing made July II, 1907.
n6 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

arises, how this not wholly regrettable deprivation was

acquired, since it was not congenital.

There are two ways in which a planet not only may,

but inevitably must, be robbed of its water supply —

from without and from within. It may lose its oceans

 

November 5, 1907. September 1, 1907.

Paring on the Terminator (Right-hand Edge) of Mars where

Dark Areas cross; indicating that they lie at a Lower Level

than the Rest of the Surface, and were once Seas.

by absorption into its interior and by a slow depletion

into space. While a body is yet molten, the conti

nuity of its substance bars entrance to aught else ; but

as it cools and shrinks, fissures and crevices open in it,

and into these the surface water sooner or later finds

its way. As a planet ages, its very wrinkles must

cause it to dry up. This is one drain upon its surface

seas that is sure to occur. The other is equally sched

uled to happen. It depends upon the fact that gases

are composed of particles called molecules travelling at

great speeds. Temperature is the expression of
MARS AND FUTURE OF EARTH 117

this energy, varying, indeed, as the product of the

square of the speed by the mass of the particle. Such

motion it is that causes gases to expand. In their

journeyings the molecules collide, and thus give and

take velocity. In consequence, some are moving

swiftly, some slowly. The molecules are flying about

in all directions, and as long as they do not go too fast,

the planet about which they act as atmosphere con

tinues to control them by its gravity. This it can

continue to do up to a speed called its critical velocity,

which is the velocity the planet can impart to a particle

falling freely to it from infinite space. For the planet

can annul just the speed it is able to cause and no

more. But if, in their give and take of motion, a

molecule gets to going faster than the critical velocity,

it will escape into space and start on interstellar

travels of its own. These molecules will never return

to the body they have left, and as such desertion is

constantly going on, it will eventually deplete the

planet of all the gases it once possessed.

Now, from any liquid surface evaporation is perpet

ually taking place ; so that an ocean is being slowly

and silently lifted into the air. Ordinarily its particles

fall again in the shape of rain, but not those which by

collision gain sufficient speed. These from their tip

toe vantage-point take final flight into interplanetary

space. The smaller the body, the sooner must it lose
n8 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

its seas, for the less can it hold on by its lesser gravity

to its water-vapor. Three stages in the inevitable

parting with its hydrosphere are exemplified to-day

by the earth, Mars, and the moon. On the earth

the sea-bottoms still hold seas, on Mars they only

nourish vegetation, on the moon they contain noth

ing at all.

Parity of reasoning points to the road the earth

must follow. Sharpened by science, we actually per

ceive the progress along it that our world has already

made.

The oceans of Attention shows that loss of water has been going

on through the eons that have passed, and that the appearing. O f '

process is taking place under our very eyes to-day.

Once laid down, the earth's oceans have been slowly

disappearing since. The reason they have not wholly

departed is partly because there was so much to go,

partly because its greater mass has helped the earth to

hold on to them the better. The speed of departure

the earth can restrain is more than double that for

Mars —6.9 miles per second instead of 3.1 miles.

Thus the way by the skies is less available. On the

other hand, the greater initial heat of its interior has

kept the water from sinking in to a degree beyond

what is possible in a smaller globe. The earth has

thus lagged in its losings, but it has lost, for all

that.

I
MARS AND FUTURE OF EARTH 119

Withdrawal of water should show in a diminution Gain of land

of the surface of the planet covered by the sea. Ob- '" °. . r / America and servation proves this to be a fact. With research we Europe.

may assure ourselves that the depletion is in process.

 

From Dana's " Manual of Geology." (American Book Company.)]

Map of North America, showing Approximately the Areas of Dry

Land (indicated by the White Spaces) at the Close of Archaean

Time.

The late Professor Dana of New Haven constructed

maps of North America from the evidence afforded

by the geologic sedimentary strata, showing what of it

had been terra firma in the successive periods of
120 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

geologic time. A comparison of his charts gives

most interesting and conclusive proof that the land

in North America has been gaining at the expense of

the sea from the time the sea first was.*

But North America was not alone in its natural

territorial aggrandizement. Europe exemplifies the

same generally steady, if temporarily fluctuating, con

quest of terrain. As in North America, the land

started at the north, and encroached upon the ocean

farther and farther southward. What we commonly

regard as Europe was, in paleozoic times, under the

surface of the sea. Only the north of Scotland and

Scandinavia protruded. . Had the present great navies

of the world been in existence then, they would have

found ample scope for their operations, but would

have missed their present bases of supply, since they

could have sailed over the sites of London, Paris, or

Berlin.

Wherever geologists have studied them, the strata

tell the same tale. The land has spread, the ocean

shrunk, from the time they first partitioned out the

surface. Now, a general universal gain of the sort can

mean only one of two things. Either the oceans have

been deepening or disappearing. If crumplings of

the crust have caused increased depression in the

ocean basins, they should have been equally busied in

•Sec " Mars and its Canals." Macmillan.
MARS AND FUTURE OF EARTH 121

elevating the continental plateaux. There is no evi

dence of any widespread raisings of the sort. For

though mountain-chains have been pushed up, they

are effects of local crumpling, not of broad buckler

like embossment. From the very fact that they are

fractures, they relegate long, low upiifts to the past.

We are left, then, with the alternative that the seas

have been slowly reduced in volume.

Testimony to this same effect keeps cropping up. Lowering of

Only the other day the Chagos Archipelago, a littleknown congeries of coral reefs south of the Maldives,

was studied by Mr. Stanley Gardiner, of the Sladen

Expedition, who concluded, from the appearance of

the atolls, which, like oases in the desert, dot the

waste of waters, that an alteration of level has been

universal throughout the Indo-Pacific coral-reef re

gion, from latitude 300 N. to latitude 250 S. From

the fact that it was so widespread, there being evi

dence of many local upheavals throughout the zone,

he inferred it to be due to a withdrawal of water rather

than to a change of level in the ocean floor. The

amount required to account for the appearance varied

from five to thirty-five feet. Thirty-five feet may at

first sound small, but occurring over hundreds of

thousands of square miles, it means a good deal of

water lost.

What is exhaling in the oceanic areas may be gauged inland «=».
122 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

by what is transpiring in the smaller cut-off bodies

of water, such as the Caspian, the Sea of Aral,

and the Great Salt Lake. For the drainage basins of

these inland seas are not only comparable with, but

actually larger in proportion than, those of the oceans.

Consequently they are fed the better of the two.

Nevertheless, they are all with one consent evaporat

ing at a very perceptible rate. Most of them are

below the level of the sea, which in itself speaks for

the depletion undergone since they were left behind

by the retreating main body of water. Marine shells,

fishes, and seals, persisting in the Caspian still, testify

to its abandoned character. Seals, indeed, witness to

its now distancing its greater prototype in its haste

to be gone, in spite of the huge fresh-water drainage

it at present receives. For in the great Kara Bugas

Gulf, on the Caspian's eastern side, the evaporation

is so rapid that while a current sets into it from its

narrow opening, with no compensating outward one,

it is becoming so salt that seals can no longer live

there. The Caspian is disappearing before our eyes,

as the remains, some distance from its edge, of what

once were ports mutely inform us.* Even so is it

with the Great Salt Lake, the very rate of its sub

sidence being known and measured.

The earth, then, is going the way of Mars. As

•Sec Huntington, recent examination of the shores of the Caspian.

/^
MARS AND FUTURE OF EARTH 123

there now, so here in time will be ushered in a phase Terreswaiity of planetary evolution to which the earth as yet is ^"eoussn^

stranger — the purely terrestrial, as opposed to the

present terraqueous, character of its surface. Much

must surely follow such a change of scene. What

it will be like we must study Mars to know, since

Mars presents us the picture of a world that has

reached that pass. To all of us this cannot but

offer a certain exploratory incentive —one concerned

not with space alone, but with time. For while we

directly scan the planet for what it has to say about

itself, we are indirectly reading a story which has some

thing to tell of our own future career. If we can

succeed in separating in this the particular from the

generic, what is local to Mars from what is cosmic in

character, we shall do on a broad scale what the early

astrologers thought to do on a narrow one, and in

stead of reading in the skies the fortunes of individuals,

decipher there the fate of the whole earth.

Something further of this sort we may indeed do,

and this by help of the same principle that led us to

the loss of seas. The drying up which causes their

extinction is no less active on the land. Being a

general deprivation common to the whole planet, the

two kinds of surface must suffer synchronously. The

effects, however, are much less bearable on terra firma.

What in the withdrawal of water lowers oceans to
i24 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

affluence, reduces tracts of vegetation to penury. The

once fertile fields become deserts.

Deserts. Deserts already exist on the earth, and the name

less horror that attaches to the word in the thoughts

of all who have had experience of them, or are gifted

with imagination to conceive, is in truth greater than

we commonly suppose. For the cosmic circumstance

about them which is most terrible is not that deserts

are, but that deserts have begun to be. Not as local,

evitable evils only are they to be pictured, but as the

general unescapable death-grip on our world. They

mark the beginning of the end. For these deserts are

growing. First steps they are in the long retreat of

water. What depauperates the forests to grass-lands,

and thence to wastes, must in turn attack the seabottoms when they shall have parted with their seas.

Last of the fertile spots upon the planet because of the

salts the streams have for ages washed down, and of

the remnant of moisture that would still drain into

them, eventually they must share the fortune of their

predecessors, and the planet roll a parched orb through

space. The picture is forbidding ; but the fact seems

one to which we are constructively pledged and into

which we are in some sort already adventured.

Girdling the earth with what it takes but little

personification to liken to the life-extinguishing ser

pent's coils, run two desert-belts of country. The
MARS AND FUTURE OF EARTH 125

one follows, roughly speaking, the Tropic of Cancer,

extending northward from it ; the other, the Tropic of

Capricorn. Arizona is in the northern band, as are

the Sahara, Arabia, and the deserts of central Asia.

Now, these desert-belts are widening. In the great

desert of northern Arizona the traveller, threading his

 

Petrified Forest of Arizona.

way across a sage-brush and cacti plain shut in by ab

rupt-sided shelves of land rising here and there some

hundreds of feet higher, suddenly comes upon a

petrified forest. Trunks of trees in all stages of

fracture strew the ground over a space some miles

in extent. So perfect are their forms, he is almost

minded to think the usual wasteful wood-chopper has

been by and left the scattered products of his art in

littered confusion upon the scene of his exploit. Only

their beautiful color conveys a sense of strangeness to
The pctri6ed

forest of

Arizona.

the 126 eye,MARS and leaning AS THE down ABODE and touching OFthem, LIFEhe finds

that they are —stone. Chalcedony, not carbon!

Form has outlived substance and kept the resemblance,

while the particles of the original matter have all been

spirited away. Yet so perfect is the presentment, one

can hardly believe the fact, and where one fallen giant

 

Another View of the Petrified Forest of Arizona.

spans a barren canon, one almost thinks to hear the

sound of water rushing down the creek.

But it is some millions of years and more since this

catastrophe befell, and the torrent, uprooting it, left it

prone, with limbs outstretched in futile grasp upon

the other side. A conifer it was, cousin only to such

as grow to-day, and flourished probably in the Creta

ceous era ; for the land has not been under water here

since the advent of Tertiary times.
MARS AND FUTURE OF EARTH 127

Nowhere near it, except for the rare cottonwoods

along the bank of the Little Colorado, grows anything

to-day. The land which once supported these forests is

incompetent to do so now. Yet nothing has changed

there since, except the decreasing water-supply. Dur

ing Tertiary and Quaternary time the rainfall has

been growing less and less. Proof of this is offered

by the great pine oasis that caps the plateau of which

these petrified forests form a part, and is kernelled by

the San Francisco peaks. The height above sea-level

of the spot where the chalcedony trunks are strewn is

about 4500 feet ; the lower present limit of the pine

in its full development is 6500 feet. Two thousand

feet upward the verdure-line has retreated since the

former forests were. And this is no local alteration,

for upon the other side of the plateau petrified remains

of trees are similarly found.

The line of perpetual green has risen because in

desert regions the moisture is found most plentiful

nearest to the clouds from which it falls upon a parch

ing earth. Streams, instead of gathering volume as

they go, are largest near their source, and grow less

and less with each fresh mile of flow. The brooks

descending from the Anti-Lebanon, in Syria, water

the gardens of Damascus, and, thence issuing upon

the plain, lose themselves just beyond the threshold of

its gates. So in the Arizona desert, though in a less
Carthage.

degree 128 MARS ; and those AS who THEliveABODE there knowOFit LIFE but too well.

It is desert craft for Indians or cow-boys to seek water

on the mesas, not at their base. To ascend after it is

one of the footnotes of their trade.

Egypt and parching The evidence of the land hereis brought not whollybefore confined us oftoawestern secular

North America. Crossing to the other side of the

world, we come upon like remains. Upon the plateau

above the Nile, near Cairo, the traveller goes to see

another petrified graveyard of trees. It is prehistoric,

yet contemporaneous with man ; for paleolithic and

neolithic implements have been found not far away,

showing that in the morning of his race man lived and

hunted in these forests, where neither hunter nor

hunted could exist to-day.

Upon the southern coast of the Mediterranean, at

the edges of the great Sahara, are to be seen to-day

the ruins of vast aqueducts stalking silently across the

plains. Fallen into decay now, they attest something

more than the passing of the force of those who built

them from the scene they once made great. Carthage

has crumbled again to earth, and these sentinelling

arches alone remain to show what tentacles of suste

nance it formerly thrust out. Still architecturally im

pressive, they span not space alone, but time. They

testify to something to be carried as well as to a city

to which to carry it. This, now, has disappeared
MARS AND FUTURE OF EARTH 129

as completely as its drinkers. At the present day the

streams are incompetent to supply the aqueducts, the

very presence of which attests that in the past this was

not so. The land has parched since times so recent

as to be historic, recorded by the monuments of man.

Nor are we left to monuments for sole light upon

the subject. The very fauna has changed. Animals

that once inhabited the land are unable to live there

now because of the increasing aridity of the habitat.

Thus they add their testimony to that of the mute

purveyors of water whose occupation is gone. The

surprising thing is that it should all have happened so

recently. In a startling manner it brings before us the

speed with which the desert is gaining on the habitable

earth.

Palestine tells the same story. The land which palatine.

once flowed with milk and honey can hardly flow bad

water now. Nor is this because the folk who made

its greatness have since been scattered over the face of

the earth. Much goes to ruin when the master hand

is stilled, but no rich country ever lapsed to desert for

this cause unless its fertility was irrigation-made. Con

clusive and convincing is here the evidence that the

land itself has changed.

Upon comparing the places where this desertism Subtropical appears, it will be found that all occur in a band about ^^,c y

the earth not far from either tropic, and extending
130 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

north or south from it according to the hemisphere

concerned. Now, when we turn to the tables of the

rainfall for different parallels, we find this localization

explained.

It is precisely in these belts that the average rainfall

is least, except, indeed, far north, where the steppes

attest to like aridity. The occurrence of the deserts

is thus an affair of the circulation of the atmosphere,

and from that fact is lifted at once into the region of

general planetary evolution. For atmospheric circula

tion is a necessary consequence of a body having an

atmosphere and being exposed to the action of the

sun. The general effects of it are as follows : The

equatorial region being the most continuously heated

by the solar beams, the air above it rises and flows

over at the top, necessarily poleward. The air about

the tropics flows in to take its place. Meanwhile the

lower portion of the equatorial emigrant, finding the

space below less occupied, descends to earth in the

forties, causing the prevailing winds in those regions.

The upper part proceeds more or less spirally round

the pole. This general circulation is independent in

its main action of the character of the ground. Areas

of sea and land modify the motions, but do not nega

tive the results.

Now, keeping this circulation in the mind's eye, we

note that, other things equal, those winds that descend
MARS AND FUTURE OF EARTH 131

from colder regions to warmer ones must be dry.

For, on being heated, air becomes capable of taking

up more moisture than before, and is by this re

strained from depositing the water it already contains

in the form of rain or snow or dew. It thus keeps

with it such moisture as it has or as it acquires, and

instead of being a bountiful dropper of fatness from

its clouds, courses over the surface a scorching sirocco.

Such is the fundamental, uncomplicated process, and,

in consequence, desert-belts are bound to form in time,

and just where we find those of the earth to-day, bar

ring exceptions locally explained. For adventitious

bodies of water over which these winds pass may sup

ply them with water which mountain-chains may pre

cipitate again on their windward side by the cooling of

the winds due to rising up their flanks. Either of

these accidents of surface may thus modify the effect

without affecting the principle.

Turning now to Mars, we find what is but in its Planetary infancy on earth, there in full control. Not only are . nge .

• ' J advanced on the desert-belts in existence, but the whole surface, Man.

except for the sea-bottoms, has gone the same way.

Five-eighths of it all is now an arid waste, unrelieved

from sterility by surface moisture or covering of cloud.

Bare itself, it is pitilessly held up to a brazen sun, un

protected by any shield of shade.

That such is the case with our neighbor certain
i32 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

points about it indicate. The first of these is hue.

The fiery color from which Mars was named turns out

in the telescope to be an ochre dashed with red. This

is just the tint our own deserts show when one looks

down on them from a mountain peak. The next

thing is their unalterableness. Except for seeming

ruddier at times, they change not, the seasons that so

transform the blue-green areas passing over them in

vain. Thus both in look and deed they bespeak

themselves vast Saharas, these great ochre stretches of

the disk.

Their positioning tells the same story. This we

perceive on considering what their situation is as com

pared with what it should be for such state.

Absence of moisture should not alter the general

wind circulation sketched above, and we should expect

to find, whatever the planet, the wet and dry zones

much what they are on the earth, if trace of them still

existed. To the map of Mars we therefore turn to

mark whether this be so. In such envisagement, one

antedating circumstance must be allowed for : the local

positioning of the oceanic basins ; for an ocean, by

reason of its original supply, would outlast its latitu

dinal time-limit. Its marine constitution would defy

the law.

Now, the oceans of Mars lay in the southern hemi

sphere of the planet. This qualifies the action in that

4
MARS AND FUTURE OF EARTH 133

hemisphere, and makes the southern subtropic zone

one of verdure to-day. This, therefore, is no dis

proof of the general law ; it is but an added argument

that these present blue-green areas were seas at some

former epoch.

Otherwise is it with the surfaceography of the

northern hemisphere, since in the beginning that was

probably fairly free from land-and-water distribution

of a sufficiently pronounced type to hinder the play of

the desert-making tendency. Here, then, we should

look for confirmation of the principle that the subtropic zone should be more arid than the temperate

one, and here we find something which is suggestive.

The southern subtropic zone is destitute of blue-green

areas —that is, areas of vegetation —all round the

planet. Not so the temperate zone above it. In the

latter are found all the larger blue-green regions in the

planet's northern hemisphere — the Mare Acidalium,

the Propontis, and the Wedge of Casius. And all

these are approximately upon the same parallel of lati

tude. The Lucus Niliacus, and the Mare Acidalium

stretch from latitude 29° N. to latitude 550; the Pro

pontis from 37° to 48° ; and the Wedge of Casius

from 35° to 560. That such consensus in situation can

be due to chance is certainly unlikely. Here, then,

linger the last vestiges of vegetation of the northern

hemisphere.
i34 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

The opaline As important is the present great extent of the

Martian deserts. Beautiful as the opaline tints of the

planet look, down the far vista of the telescope-tube,

they represent a really terrible reality. To the bodily

eye, the aspect of the disk is lovely beyond compare ;

but to the mind's eye, its import is horrible. That

rose-ochre enchantment is but a mind mirage. A vast

expanse of arid ground, world-wide in its extent,

girdling the planet completely in circumference, and

stretching in places almost from pole to pole, is what

those opaline glamours signify. All deserts, seen from

a safe distance, have something of this charm of tint.

Their bare rock gives them color, from yellow marl

through ruddy sandstone to blue slate. And color

shows across space for the massing due to great extent.

But this very color, unchanging in its hue, means the

extinction of life. Pitilessly persistent, the opal here

bears out its attributed sinister intent.

To let one's thoughts dwell on these Martian Saharas

is gradually to enter into the spirit of the spot, and so

to gain comprehension of what the essence of Mars con

sists. Without such background always omnipresent

in the picture, the lesser and more pregnant features fail

of effect in their true value for want of setting off. To

conceive of this great buckler of brazen sand and

rock, level as a polished shield, and stretching to the

far distance, to stand sharp-cut there by the horizon
MARS AND FUTURE OF EARTH 135

of a sky, unrelieved by so much as mountain-notching

of its blue, is to realize" in part what life on it must

mean. Where days and months of travel would bring

one no nearer to its edge, despair might well settle on

the mind. And the sun in its daily course rises from

out the stony waste only to set in it again.

Pitiless indeed, yet to this condition the earth itself How the

must come, if it last so long. With steady, if stealthy, *TmH *"'

stride, Saharas, as we have seen, are even now possess

ing themselves of its surface. The outcome is doubt

less yet far off, but it is as fatalistically sure as that to

morrow's sun will rise, unless some other catastrophe

anticipate the 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.

Before the final stage in the long life drama of a

planet is thus brought to its close, there will come

a time when the water, having left the surface, still

lingers for a little in the air. For the atmosphere is

the pathway the water takes to the sky. Insufficient

in amount to leave a surplus on the ground in the

shape of oceans, or even lakes and ponds, a certain

quantity will still hover up above. From the mode

of its withdrawal, a planet must lose its surface water

long before it loses the aqueous vapor from its air, so

that the absence of the one argues nothing against the
136 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

Water preient

in the Mar

tian atmos

phere.

presence of the other. Now there are physical reasons

connected with evaporation which would make for

more water in the air of Mars than of the earth, and

yet not permit of precipitation.

In Chapter III we marshalled the evidence we have

that water exists on the surface of Mars: in the polar

caps and practically nowhere else. We have now to

see what proof there is that it still exists in the Martian

air. The evidence on which this rests is twofold: the

 

 

Effect of the Spring Mist around the North Polar Cap of Mars

Drawn January 25, 1905 (Martian date, June 23).

first telescopic, in the aspect of the disk. Water-vapor,

as such, of course, we could not expect to see, as it is

invisible constitutionally. But when, suspended in the

air, it condenses into drops or spicules, we might hope

for detection. Such proves a possibility occasionally

on Mars.

As the North polar cap melts, there comes a season

when an indefinite pearly appearance fringes its edge,

obliterating its contours, which before were sharp.

This persists for some weeks, off and on, and when at
MARS AND FUTURE OF EARTH 137

last it clears, the cap is seen to be reduced to its least

extent. That it is mist caused by the melting of the

cap there is little doubt.

But there is another instrument of astronomical re

search the special field of which is the study of the

invisible. To see indirectly what cannot be seen direct

is the province of the spectroscope. The spectroscope

consists of a prism or train of prisms which disperse

white light into a rainbow-tinted ribbon known as the

spectrum, made up of rays of different wave-length from

violet at one end to red at the other. Now it is a

property of a gas, through which light passes, to absorb

certain of the rays peculiar to itself, and so form dark

lines across the spectrum at those points. Most of

the lines thus observed in the solar spectrum come

from gases in the photosphere of the sun, but there

are certain others which arise in our own atmospheric

envelope and are called telluric lines in consequence.

Such are the oxygen and water-vapor bands. If now

another planet, such as Mars, possessed either of these

gases in its atmosphere, the light reflected from it

should disclose the fact by deepening these bands.

Much was hoped from the spectroscope on this

point.

Up to and beyond the time when the lectures were

written, of which this book is the outcome, the spec

troscope had not proved itself a sufficiently delicate in
138 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

strument to give other than an uncertain answer on the

presence or absence of water-vapor on Mars. Huggins,

Vogel, Jans^en, all thought to see evidence of it there;

Campbell, with more accurate instruments, could find

none. Nor could any be obtained under still more

favorable conditions of air and instrument at Flagstaff.

The reason for inconclusion, though unsuspected at the

time, lay in the position of the bands in the spectrum

produced by water-vapor. These begin, indeed, in the

yellow, are present in the orange and light red, but are

broadest and darkest in the partially visible deep

red and in the invisible spectrum beyond it. These

strongest bands were beyond the appliances of the day

for purposes of careful comparison, while the others

were not sufficiently salient to make delicate contrasts

unmistakable.

In the spring of 1908, Mr. V. M. Slipher succeeded

at Flagstaff in bathing plates to sensitiveness through

the red, and, exposing these plates in the camera of the

spectroscope, photographed the spectrum first of Mars

and then of the moon at the same altitude to well

beyond the point where the great water-vapor band

known as " a " lies. He took in all eight such plates,

with the result that the " a " band showed stronger in

the spectrum of the planet than in that of the moon.

Now in the case of the moon it is through our own

atmosphere only that we are looking ; in the case of
 

<

F

b

E

D

C

aB

A

Slipher, Observstory Spectrogrsm ofthe Moon V.Lowell and Mars by

testifying Wster-vapor stronger Spectrum; Showing intheotus the "a" bsnd ihsrtisn than Lunsr

stmosphere Msrtisn

Moon . .Ma,

MARS AND FUTURE OF EARTH 139

Mars, through our own plus that of Mars. Any dif

ference between the two must be due to the Martian

air. A strengthening, then, in the expression of the

" a " bands denoted water-vapor present in the atmos

phere of Mars. Here we have the much-desired

spectroscopic proof, and with it the explanation of why

so much uncertainty existed among eminent spectroscopists before. To those versed in Mars it is chiefly

of the nature of corroboration. For to the mind's eye

reasoning had already revealed that water-vapor must

be there, but now the bodily eye of any one may see.

The thing is curiously paralleled by the way in which

Clerk Maxwell's analysis showed the rings of Saturn

to be made of discrete particles before the spectroscope

in Keeler's ingenious hands stamped its evidence on a

photographic plate.

That water-vapor exists in the air is cause for its

deposition on the ground. But to be precipitated and

to stay so are two very different things. The only

way in which so scant an amount could remain de

posited in any part of the planet would be as frozen

moisture about the pole. For as snow it stays

fixed, evaporation at a low temperature going so

much less fast than from water under its appropriate

higher one. A snow-field suitably situated might thus

persist while a pond would speedily disappear. The

polar snows would be the only place where moisture
140 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

could descend to the surface to stay, being brought to

the polar regions by the planetary winds.

With regard to the distribution of the humidity,

what scant moisture the desert-born equatorial winds

might possess would be deposited northward as they

cooled, in part impermanently in the forties, in part

more permanently at the poles. The return flow of

air in winter, being steadily warmed, would not tend to

deposit moisture down the disk ; nor in summer either,

to any extent, although from the melting of the cap

such winds would then be more charged with vapor.

Unlike our own earth, therefore, moisture would pro

ceed poleward, to remain there. Not only, therefore,

is the water much less in amount on Mars, but what

is there tends to be kept about the poles. The only

available supply lies in the arctic and antarctic regions,

stationary on the ground or else is in process of jour

neying round to it again.

In this last stage of temporizing, the water that

once as such bespread Mars's face now is. The wellnigh total disappearance of the one cap, and the entire

extinction of the other, show how each summer melts

what the winter had deposited, and that in both cases

this is nearly the sum total of the cap. Covering as

each does so much territory, one might suppose the

water not scanty, but comparable in quantity to the

earth's supply. If we calculate it, however, we shall
MARS AND FUTURE OF EARTH 141

find this anything but the case. At Point Barrow, in

Alaska, in latitude 710 N., where the temperature is be

low freezing from September 1 to June 15, 75 inches

of snow fall during the nine and a half months.

Ten inches of snow are equal to one inch of water.

This quantity, then, measures the amount of the

Earth's impermanent cap, and forms a basis for com

parison with the depth of the snow-cap melted on

Mars. It seems, too, not an improbable value for

what occurs there ; for though on the one hand it is

likely that day by day the snowfall is greater at Point

Barrow than on Thyle, in Mars, at the same latitude,

on the other, the winter season is there twice as long.

To be lavish, we may estimate that the equivalent of

100 inches of snow fall on Thyle. That would mean

10 inches of water. Now, the southern cap of Mars,

the larger of the two, covers 96° across at its

greatest, which makes its area equal to one-fifth of the

whole surface of the planet. To this we need not add

the other cap, since it at the time stretches over only

6°, a vanishing quantity in comparison. On earth,

oceans cover 72 per cent of the surface, and are, on

the average, 2100 fathoms deep. Calculation from

these data gives the amount of water on the earth as

189,000 times that on Mars. We said rightly, then,

that Mars was badly off for water.

In consequence of this state of things, the water
i42 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

supply of the planet is both scant in amount and teth

ered at that. For it is tied up during the greater part

of the year at one pole or the other. For a few weeks

only of each six months it stands unlocked, first in

the arctic, then in the antarctic, zone. Then, and then

only, may this deposit, meagre as it is, be drawn upon.

Mars is indebted for the staff of life to a polar pittance

sparsely doled out, and that only at appointed times.

The mr&ce Study of the natural features of the planet leaves us,

of Mars a. i*a c • i , • , waterier then, this picture or its present state —a world-wide

worW- desert rule, andwhere whrefertile waterspots everywhere are theis exception, scarce. Sonotscanty the

is this organic essential, that over the greater part of

the surface there is none to quicken vegetation or to

support life. Only here and there by nature are pos

sible those processes which make our earth the habit

able, homelike place we know. In our survey of

Mars, then, we behold the saddening picture of a

world athirst, where, as in our own Saharas, water is

the one thing needful, and yet where by nature it can

not be got. But one line of salvation is open to it,

and that lies in the periodic unlocking of the remnant

of water that each year gathers as snow and ice about

its poles.

a high type The evidence of observation thus bears out what

of life probable we might SuSpect from the planet's smaller size : that

on Man, it is much farther along in its planetary career than is
MARS AND FUTURE OF EARTH 143

our earth. This aging in its own condition must have

its effect upon any life it may previously have brought

forth. That life at the present moment would be

likely to be of a high order. For whatever its actual

age, any life now existent on Mars must be in the land

stage of its development, on the whole a much higher

one than the marine. But, more than this, it should

probably have gone much farther if it exist at all, for

in its evolving of terra firma, Mars has far outstripped

the earth. Mars's surface is now all land. Its forms

of life must be not only terrestrial as against aquatic,

but even as opposed to terraqueous ones. They must

have reached not simply the stage of land-dwelling,

where the possibilities are greater for those able to em

brace them, but that further point of pinching poverty

where brain is needed to survive at all.

The struggle for existence in their planet's decrepi

tude and decay would tend to evolve intelligence to

cope with circumstances growing momentarily more

and more adverse. But, furthermore, the solidarity

that the conditions prescribed would conduce to a

breadth of understanding sufficient to utilize it. Inter

communication over the whole globe is made not only

possible, but obligatory. This would lead to the

easier spreading over it of some dominant creature, —

especially were this being of an advanced order of in

tellect, —able to rise above its bodily limitations to
144 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

amelioration of the conditions through exercise of

mind. What absence of seas would thus entail,

absence of mountains would further. These two ob

stacles to distribution removed, life there would tend

the quicker to reach a highly organized stage. Thus

Martian conditions themselves make for intelligence.

The probabii- Our knowledge of it would likewise have its likeliManatthe" no°d increased. Not only could any beings there dispreaent time, close their presence only through their works, but

from the physical features the planet presents, we are

led to believe that such disclosure would be distinctly

more probable than in the case of the earth. Any

markings made by mind should there be more defi

nite, more uniform, and more widespread than those

human ones with which we are familiar. More domi

nant of its domicile, it should so have impressed itself

upon its habitat as to impress us across intervening

space.

What the character of such markings might be, we

shall best conceive by letting the pitiless forbiddingness

of the Martian surface take hold upon our thought.

Between the two polar husbandings of the only water

left, stands the pathless desert —pathless even to the

water semiannually set free. Only overhead does the

moisture find natural passage to its winter sojourn at

the other pole. Untraversable without water to

organic life, and uninhabitable, the Sahara cuts off
MARS AND FUTURE OF EARTH 145

completely the planet's hemispheres from each other,

barring surface commerce by sundering its supplies.

Thirst — the thirst of the desert — comes to us as we

realize the situation, parching our trlroat as we think

of a thirst impossible of quenching except in the faroff and by nature unattainable polar snows.

Turning again to Mars with quickened sense, we

witness an astounding thing, the study of which in its

mien, its moods, and its meaning, the next two chap

ters will take up.
T

and the canals.

CHAPTER V

THE CANALS AND OASES OF MARS

THIRTY years ago what were taken for the con

tinents of Mars seemed, as one would expect

continents seen at such a distance to appear, virtually

featureless.

Schiapareiii In 1 877, however, a remarkable observer made a

still more remarkable discovery ; for in that year

Schiaparelli, in scanning these continents, chanced

upon long, narrow markings in them which have

since become famous as the canals of Mars. Sur

prising as they seemed when first imperfectly made

out, they have grown only more wonderful with

study. It is certainly no exaggeration to say that

they are the most astounding objects to be viewed in

the heavens. There are celestial sights more dazzling,

spectacles that inspire more awe, but to the thoughtful

observer who is privileged to see them well there is

nothing in the sky so profoundly impressive as these

canals of Mars. Fine lines and little gossamer fila

ments only, cobwebbing the face of the Martian disk,

but threads to draw one's mind after them across the

millions of miles of intervening void.

Although to the observer practised in their detec

tion they are at certain times not only perfectly dis146
THE CANALS AND OASES OF MARS 147

tinct, but are not even difficult objects, —being by no

means at the limit of vision, as is often stated from

ignorance, — to one not used to the subject, and

observing under the average conditions of our trouble

some air, they are not at first so easy to descry. Had

they been so very facile, they had not escaped detec

tion so long, nor needed Schiaparelli, the best observer

of his day, to discover them. But in good air they

stand out at times with startling abruptness. I say

this after having had twelve years' experience in the

subject —almost entitling one to an opinion equal to

that of critics who have had none at all.

How beside the mark it is to credit them to illusion

may at once be appreciated from the fact that experi

ment shows the main ones to appear through the tele

scope of the same size as a telegraph wire seen with the

naked eye at a distance of a hundred and fifty feet.

But if the air be not steady, they are blurred almost

out of recognition.

With our air at its best, the first thing to strike one

in these strange phenomena is their geometric look.

It has impressed every observer who has seen them

well. It would be hard to determine to which of

their peculiar characteristics this effect was specially

due. Indeed, it is probably attributable to their com

bination ; for distinctive as each trait is alone, their

summation is multiplicitly telling. That the lines run
148 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

Knight.

quite straight from point to point —that is, on arcs of

great circles, or else curve in an equally determinate

manner ; that they are of uniform width throughout ;

that their tenuity is extreme and that they are of

enormous length, are attributes each of which is geo

metrically startling and which, taken together, enhance

this in geometric ratio.

Linraare means Thatthatthe onlines a sphere are absolutely like Mars straight they follow — which arcs

of great circles — is shown by two facts which fay

into one another. One of these is that they look

straight to the observer when central enough not to

have foreshortening tell. This could not happen

unless they were the shortest possible lines between

their termini. The other proof consists in their fitting

together to form a self-agreeing whole when the result

of all the drawings —hundreds in number at each

opposition —are plotted on a globe.

In regard to their width, it would be nearest the

mark to say that they had none at all. For they

have been found narrower and narrower as the con

ditions of scanning have improved. By careful ex

periments at Flagstaff it has been shown that the

smallest appear as they should were they but a mile

across. The reason so slender a filament is visible is

due to its length, and this probably because of the

number of retinal cones that are struck. Were only
 

Hyde Park and Park Lane, London, 1908

From a Free Balloon.

 

From Photographs at 2200 feet by Profs. Kotch and Lowell

Hyde Park and The Serpentine

Showing Artificial Markings of Earth seen from Space.

THE CANALS AND OASES OF MARS 149

one affected, as would be the case were the object a

point, it certainly could not be detected.16

So much for the smallest canal now visible with our

present means. The larger are much more conspicu

ous. These look not like gossamers, as the little

ones do, but like strong pencil-lines. Comparison

with the thread of the micrometer gives for the average

canal a breadth of about ten miles. The canals, how

ever, are by no means of a uniform width. Indeed,

they are of all sizes, from lines it would seem impos

sible to miss to others it taxes attention to descry.

All the more surprising for their relative diversity

is the remarkably uniform size of each throughout its

course. So far as it is possible to make out, there is

no perceptible difference in width of a canal, when fully

developed, from one end of it to the other. Certainly

it takes a well-ruled line on paper to look its peer for

regularity and deportment.

True thus to itself, each canal differs from its neigh

bor not only in width, but in extension. For the

canals are of very various length. Some are not above

250 miles long, while others stretch 2500 miles from

end to end. Nor is this span by any means the limit.

The Eumenides-Orcus runs 3450 miles from where it

leaves the Phoenix Lake to where it enters the Trivium

Charontis. Enormous as these distances are for lines

which remain straight throughout, they become the
150 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

more surprising when we consider the size of the

planet on which they are found. For Mars is only

4^;o miles through, while the earth is "919. So that

 

A S>k~v\x „** *-«s Cwu. EV"M>:r«s-0«crs tekmixattnc in the

TV» v*?** ,h <vs ,-cto. s sjsxj «;isi. TSe sew^ader of the canal may be seen

v» "v- V-tt.3i.i3wf s-Vti ,11 :* sja. waure at sorts fewn Phoenix Lake (Lucus

4 Cf*a ^♦CO' isv'es *or^, for all its unswervingness

tv* ~-^x; cr tc't, actually curves in its own plane

t-v of" some 900 round the planet.

Nek as i F a stra^ht line joined London to

ftaitrwi to Bering Strait.
THE CANALS AND OASES OF MARS 151

It should be remembered, however, that it is the

actual, not the relative, length we have really to

consider. But this is surprising enough —more than

sufficient in the Eumenides-Orcus to span the

United States.

Odd as is the look of the individual canal, it is

nothing to the impression forced upon the observer

by their number and still more by their articulation.

When Schiaparelli finished his life-work, he had de

tected 113 canals; this figure has now been increased

to 437 by those since added at Flagstaff. As with

the discovery of the asteroids, the later found are as

a rule smaller and in consequence less evident than

the earlier. But not always ; and, unlike asteroid

hunting, it is not because of easy missing in the vast

field of sky. The cause is intrinsic to the canal.

This great number of lines forms an articulate

whole. Each stands jointed to the next (to the

many next, in fact) in the most direct and simple

manner —that of meeting at their ends. But as

each has its own peculiar length and its special

direction, the result is a sort of irregular regularity.

It resembles lace-tracery of an elaborate and elegant

pattern, woven as a whole over the disk, veiling the

planet's face. By this means the surface of the

planet is divided into a great number of polygons,

the areolas of Mars.
152 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

Schiaparelli detected the existence of the canals

when engaged in a triangulation of the planet's sur

face for topographic purpose. What he found was

a triangulation already made. In his own words,

the thing " looked to have been laid down by rule

and compass." Indeed, no lines could be more pre

cisely drawn, or more meticulously adjusted. Not

only do none of them break off in mid-career,* to

vanish, as rivers in the desert, in the great void of

ochre ground, but they contrive always in a most

gregarious way to rendezvous at special points, run

ning into the junctions with the space punctuality

of a train on time. Nor do one or two only man

age this precision ; all without exception converge

from far points accurately upon their centres. The

meetings are as definite and direct as is possible to

conceive. None of the large ochre areas escapes

some filament of the mesh. No single secluded spot

upon them could be found, were one inclined to

desert isolation, distant more than three hundred

miles from some great thoroughfare.

Canals in of For observation many years of the —ingreat fact,Italian throughout —the canals the period were

supposed to be confined to the bright or reddish

ochre regions of the disk. None had been seen by

* Their seeming occasionally to do so is due to their mode of growth seasonally

or to certain latitudes being better shown than others at the time.

dark regions.
THE CANALS AND OASES OF MARS 153

 

him elsewhere, and none was divined to exist. But

in 189a, W. H. Pickering, at Arequipa, saw lines

in the dark regions; and, in 1894, Douglass, at Flag

staff, definitely detected the presence of a system of

canals criss-crossing the

blue-green similar to that

networking the ochre.

Later work at Flagstaff

has shown all the dark

areas to be thus seamed

with lines, and lastly has

brought out with emphasis

the pregnant fact that

these are continued by

others pola snows.* connectingThus with the system is planet-wide in

its application, while it ends by running up to the

confines of the polar cap. The first gives it a

generality that opened up new conceptions of its

office, the second vouchsafes a hint as to its origin.

For many years the pioneers in this discovery of

another world had their revelations strictly to them

selves, decried as baseless views and visions by the

telescopically blind. So easily are men the dupes of

•Previous to 1907 the fact was known only for the northern hemisphere. In

1907 the Flagstaff observations disclosed the important extension of the scheme

through the antarctic zone j a striking confirmation of theory.

Canals in Dark Regions con

necting with the Polar Cap
154 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

their own prejudice. But in 1901 attempts began to

be made at Flagstaff to make them tell their own

story to the world, writing it by self-registration on

a photographic

plate. It was

long before

they could be

compelled tc

do so. The

first attempts

showed noth

ing ; the next,

two years later,

did better,

evoking faint

forms to the

initiate, but to

them alone; but

two years later

still, success

crowned the

long endeavor. At last these strange geometricisms

have stood successfully for their pictures. The photo

graphic feat of making them keep still sufficiently

long —or, what with heavenly objects is as near as

man may come to his practice with human subjects,

the catching of the air-waves still long enough to

 

Photographic Apparatus of the Lowell

Observatory

Devised by Mr. C. O. Lampland, and used in getting

the photographs of the canals of Mars.
THE CANALS AND OASES OF MARS 155

secure impression of them upon a photographic plate

—has been accomplished by Mr. Lampland. After

great study, patience, and skill he has succeeded in

this remarkable performance, of which Schiaparelli

wrote in wonder to the present writer : " I should

never have believed it possible."

Regard for positioning is one of the most signifi

cant characteristics of the lines. They join all the

salient points of the surface to one another. If we

take a map of the planet and connect its prominent

landmarks by straight lines, we shall find, to our

surprise, that we have counterfeited the reality. That

they are so regardant of topography on the one hand,

and so regardless of terrain on the other, gives a

most telltale insight into their character; it shows

that they are of later origin than the main markings

themselves. For they bear testimony to this without

regard to what they are. Their characteristics and

their attitudes, in short, betray that at some time

subsequent to the fashioning of the planet's general

features the lines were superposed upon them.

But this is not all. Since the seas probably were canals super- seas in function as in name once upon a time, the pose V"*

r » mam features.

superposition must have occurred after they ceased

to be such ; for clearly the lines could not have been

writ on water, and yet be read to-day. We are

thus not only furnished with a datum about the
156 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

origin of the canals, but with a date determining

when it took place. The date marks a late era in

the planet's development, one subsequent to any the

 

Hemisphere showing the Oasis called Ascraeus Lucus

From this radiate many canals. Also in the upper right-hand space is shown the

continuation of the Eumenides-Orcus.

earth has yet reached. This accounts for the diffi

culty found in understanding them, for as yet we

have nothing like them here.

Oas<m. Next in interest to the canals come the oases.
THE CANALS AND OASES OF MARS 157

Many years after the detection of the canals, scrutiny

revealed another class of detail upon the planet of

an equally surprising order. This was the presence

there of small, round, dark spots dotted over the

surface of the disk. Seen in any number, first by

W. H. Pickering in 1892, they lay at the meetingplaces of the canals. He called them lakes. Some

few had been caught earlier, but were not well

recognized. We now know 186 of them, and we

are very certain they are not lakes. In the case of

one of them, the Ascraeus Lucus, no less than sev

enteen canals converge to it.

It thus appears that the spots make, as it were, the

knots of the canal network. They emphasize the

junctions in look and at the same time indicate their

importance in the system. For just as no spot but

stands at a junction, so, reversely, few prominent junc

tions are without a spot, and the better the surface is

seen, the more of these junctions prove to be provided

with them.

Their form is equally demonstrative of their func

tion. They are apparently self-contained and selfcentred, being small, dark, and, as near as can be

made out, round. It is certain that they are not

mere reinforcements of the canals due to cross

ing, for crossings do occur where none are seen,

while the lines themselves are perfectly visible, and
158 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

of the same strength at the crossing as before and

after.

We now come to a yet more surprising detail.

The existence of the single canals had scarcely been

launched upon a world quite unprepared for their

reception, and duly distant in their welcome in con

sequence, before that world was asked to admit some

thing more astounding still ; namely, that at certain

times some of these canals appeared mysteriously

paired, the second line being an exact replica of the

first, running by its side the whole of its course, how

ever long this might be, and keeping equidistant from

it throughout. The two looked like the twin rails

of a railway track. (See map opposite page 217.)

To begin by giving an idea of the phenomenon, I

will select a typical example, which happened also to

be one of the very first observed by me —that of the

great Phison. The Phison is a canal that runs for 2250

miles between two important points upon the planet's

surface, the Portus Sigaeus, halfway along the Mare

Icarium, and the Pseboas Lucus, just off the Protonilus. In this long journey it traverses some six

degrees of the southern hemisphere and about forty

degrees of the northern. In 1894 the canal was first

seen as a single, well-defined line — not a line that

admitted of haziness or doubt, but which was as

strictly self-contained and slenderly distinguished as
THE CANALS AND OASES OF MARS 159

any other single canal on the planet. A Martian

month or more after it thus expressed itself, it

suddenly stood forth an equally self-confessed double,

two parallel lines replacing the solitary line of some

months before. Not the slightest difference in the

character, direction, or end served was to be detected

between the two constituents. Just as certainly as a

single line had shown before, a double line now showed

in its stead.

Study of the doubles has been prosecuted for some

years now at Flagstaff, and its prosecution has gradu

ally revealed more and more of their peculiarities.

The first thing this study of the subject has brought

out is that duality, bilateralism, is not a universal

feature of the Martian canals. Quite the contrary.

It cannot be said in any sense to be even a general

attribute of them. The great majority of the canals

never show double at any time, being persistently and

perpetually single. Out of the 437 canals so far dis

covered, only 51 have ever shown duplicity. From

this we perceive that less than one-eighth of all the

canals visible affect the characteristic, nor are these 5 1

distinguished in any manner, by size or position, from

those of the other 386 that remain pertinaciously

single. They are neither larger nor smaller, longer

nor shorter, nor anything else which would suffice on

a superficial showing to distinguish their strange in-
i6o MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

Width differs

for different

doubles.

possess herent potentiality the property.from that of those which do not

theory Now,of this theirfact formation. directly Ifcontradicts the doublesevery wereopticalrod

ucts of any optical law, that

law should apply to all canals

alike, except so far as posi

tion, real or relative upon

the disk, might affect their

visibility. Now, the double

canals are not distinguished

in any of these ways from

their single sisters. They allngles keeps forSingle sortsthe toand toofitsthe Double tilts paired singularity, meridian, toCanals the observer; and andruntheareequally other and presented yet toat its the allpreference equally one sortskindofat

estate. In a drawing made July 15, 1905.

The next point

is that the width

of the gemination

— the distance,

that is, between

the constituents

of the pair — is

not the same for

 

r n

i

?o3 1

A Mass of Double Canals, Elysium (see

the Hemisphere, Page 150)

From a drawing made on June 1, 1903.
THE CANALS AND OASES OF MARS 161

all the doubles. Indeed, it varies enormously. Thus,

we have at one end of the list the little, narrow Djihoun,

the constituents of which are not separated by more

than two degrees ; while at the other end stands the

Nilokeras, with its members eleven degrees apart.

That is, we have a parallelism of seventy-five miles in

one case, and one of four hundred in another. This

fact disposes again of any optical or illusory production

of the lines ; for were their origin such, they would all

be of the same width.

Position is the next thing to be considered. A

general investigation of this shows some results which

are highly in- __

structive. To

begin with, the

distribution of

the doubles may

looked be broadly at from

two points of

view, that of

their longitudi

nal or latitudinal

placing upon the planet. Considering the longitudinal

first, if we cut the planet in halves, the one hemi

sphere extending from longitude 20° to 200° and

the other from 2000 to 20% more than two-thirds of

 

A Mass of Single Canals about Lvcus

Phoenicis (see the Hemisphere, Page 156)

From a drawing made in November, 1894.
i62 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

all the double canals turn out to lie in the second

section ; the numbers being fifteen in the one to

thirty-six in the other. It appears, then, that the

doubles are not evenly distributed around the

planet.

We now turn to their partition according to latitude,

and here we are made aware of a significant distribu

tion affecting them. If we divide the surface into

zones of ten degrees each, starting from the equator

and travelling in either direction to the pole, and

count the double canals occurring in each, we note a

marked falling off in their number after we leave the

tropic and subtemperate zones, and a complete cessa

tion of them at latitude 63 ° north. The actual num

bers are as follows : —

Between 900 S. and 30° S o

Between 300 S. and 200 S 3

Between 20° S. and io° S 9

Between to0 S. and o° 20

Between o° and 10° N 29

Between io° N. and 20° N 26

Between 20° N. and 300 N 23

Between 300 N. and 400 N 20

Between 400 N. and 500 N 4

Between 500 N. and 6o° N 3

Between 6o° N. and 630 N 2

Between 630 N. and 900 N o
THE CANALS AND OASES OF MARS 163

As a double may pass through more than one zone, it

may be counted more than once, which explains the total

in the table, though the doubles number but fifty-one.

Thus the doubles are tropical features of the planet, Area of zones,

not general ones. Decidedly this proclaims again

their reality, for were they optical only, they could not

show such respect for the equator — a respect worthy

of commendation from Sydney Smith.

Another of their peculiarities consists in their being

confined to the light regions. For, with one possible

exception, no doubles have been detected in the dark

areas of the disk, whereas plenty of single canals have

been found there.

Yet to the dark areas they stand somehow beholden.

For the great majority of them debouch from what were

once thought seas, to traverse the great deserts. Of the

51 doubles, no fewer than 28 are thus immediately con

nected with the 'seas.' But this is not the end of the

dependence. For the remaining canals, 23 in number,

each connect with one or other of the doubles that per

sonally connect with these dark regions. In all but two

cases the secondary dependence is direct ; in these two

a smaller dark patch occurs in the line of the connection.

Thus, the double canals show a most curious sys

tematic dependence upon the great dark areas of the

southern hemisphere. In this they reproduce again the

general dependability of single canals upon topographic
164 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

features ; but with more emphatic particularity, for they

prove that not only are prominent points for much

in their localization, but that different kinds of terrain

are curiously concerned. The relation of one kind of

terrain to another is essential to their existence, since

they are virtually not found in the blue-green areas, and

yet are found in the light only in connection with the

blue-green. That the blue-green is vegetation and the

ochre desert leads one's thought to conjecture beyond.

To turn, now, to another mode of position, we

will look into the direction in which these doubles run.

To do this, we shall segregate them according to the

compass-points. Any one of them, of course, runs

two ways ; as, for example, N.N.E. and S.S.W., and

we shall therefore have but half the whole number of

compass-points to consider. Taking the direction

two points apart, we shall have eight sets, dividing

the canals into bunches, as follows : —

S. and N 7

S.S.E. and N.N.VV 5

S.E. and N.W 4

E.S.E. and W.N.W 3

E. and W 6

E.N.E. and W.S.W 6

N.E. and S.W 12

N.N.E. and S.S.W 8

5i
THE CANALS AND OASES OF MARS 165

At first, to one considering this table, no marked

preponderance for one direction over another mani

fests itself in the orientation. Still, a certain trend to

the east of north as opposed to the west of north is

discernible. For 25 doubles run within 450 of north

east and southwest, to 12 only that do the same thing

for northwest and southeast. Following up the hint

thus given us, we proceed to apportion the canals first

into quadrantal points. The result is a fairly equable

division all around the circle. Now, as a matter of

fact, by lumping the doubles of the two hemispheres

together, we have almost obliterated a striking fact

which lies hidden in the table. If, instead of thus com

bining them, we separate those exclusively of the north

ern hemisphere from those of the southern one only,

and now note in each of these what proportion trend to

the west of south as against those that run to the east

of it, and vice versa, we come out with significant re

sults. In the northern hemisphere, the proportion of

double canals to show a westward trend as opposed

to an eastern is 17 to 4. In the southern hemisphere,

the easterly-trending outnumber the westerly-trending

by 1 to 0 ; while for those whose course is common

to both hemispheres we find for the ratio of south

western to southeastern 8 to 7.

How can this be explained ? Consider a particle

descending from the pole to the equator under the
1 66 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

push of a certain momentum. As the particle (of

water, for example) reaches a lower and lower latitude,

it comes upon a surface which is travelling faster and

faster eastward, because, since all parts of the body,

whether the earth or. Mars, rotate in the same time,

those particles where the girth is greatest have the

farthest distance to go.

In consequence of this the particle would con

stantly be going at a less speed to the east than

the spot upon which it found itself adventured, and

so relatively to that place would move to the west.

From the south pole to the equator, therefore, its

course would always show a deviation southwesterly

from a due north and south direction.

In the southern hemisphere, on the other hand,

since the rotation of the planet is the same, its direc

tion with regard to the pole is different, for the sur

face upon which the particle successively comes still

sweeps to the east. It would, therefore, relatively

to the surface, move to the northwest, and we

should have in this hemisphere a northwesterly trend

from the pole equatorward.

This is actually what we see in the doubles of

Mars. The proportion of canals trending to the

west as against those trending to the east in the

northern hemisphere is, as we have seen, 17 to 4 ;

while in the southern hemisphere the proportion
THE CANALS AND OASES OF MARS 167

trending to the east is 1 to 0. As for canals occupy

ing both grounds a compromise is effected, the canals

running according to the hemisphere in which the

greater part of their course is situated. This is cer

tainly a very curious conclusion, and seems to justify

the name canals as typifying a conduit of some sort

in which something flowed.'7

Passing strange as is the mere look of the canals, The canal,

study has disclosed something about them stranger ^J"**0

yet : changes in their aspect depend on the time.

Permanent the canals are in place, impermanent they

prove in character. At one epoch they will be con

spicuous objects, almost impossible to miss ; then, a

few months later, acuteness is taxed to discover them

at all. Nor is this the whole story ; some will show

when others remain hid, and others will appear when

the first have become invisible. Whole regions are

affected by such self-effacement or an equal ostenta

tion ; while neighboring ones are simultaneously

given to the reverse.

Curiously enough, the canals are most con

spicuous not at the time the planet is nearest to

the earth and its general features are in consequence

best seen ; but as the planet goes away, the canals

come out. The fact is that the orbital position

and the seasonal epoch conspire to a masking of

the canal phenomena. For the planet comes to its
168 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

closest approach to the earth a little before it

reaches in its orbit the summer solstice of its south

ern hemisphere. For two reasons this epoch of

nearness is an unpropitious date for the canal ex

hibit : first, because the bright areas, where the

canals are easiest made out, lie chiefly in the hemi

sphere then tipped away from the earth ; and

secondly, because it is not the Martian season for

the canals to show.

Due to this inopportune occurrence of the two

events, approach and seasonableness, the canals lay

longer undetected by man than would otherwise

have been the case. Something of the same in

felicity of appointment defeats the making of their

acquaintance by many observers to-day. They look

at the wrong time.

New method From their changes in conspicuousness it was

evident that the canals, like the large blue-green

patches on the disk, were seasonal in their habit.

To discover with more particularity what their law

of change might be, an investigation to that end

was conceived and undertaken at the opposition of

1903, and in consequence a singular thing was

brought to light. The research in question was the

determination from complete drawings of the disk

of the varying visibility of the several canals statisti

cally considered during a period of many months.

of research.
THE CANALS AND OASES OF MARS 169

For the making of the drawings extended over this

time, and by a comparison of them one might note

how any particular canal had altered in the interval.

Their great number enabled accidental errors to be

largely eliminated, and so assured a more trustworthy

result. Systematic conditions affecting visibility —

such as our own air, the position of the marking,

and the size of the disk — were allowed for, so as

to make the drawings strictly comparable. On the

average, there were for each canal 100 drawings in

which that canal either appeared or might have done

so. And as 109 canals were considered in all, there

resulted 10,900 separate determinations as basis for

the eventual conclusion.

The object now was to adopt some procedure by

which this mass of material might be made to yield

statistical information, not simply qualitative but

quantitative results. Here the planet itself sug

gested a way. Owing to the rotation of Mars any

region would be carried in and out of sight to an

observer in space once in 24 hours and 40 minutes.

But owing to an analogous rotation of the earth

the observer himself is not always in a position to

see. Furthermore, the two rotations are not quite

synchronous and are besides complicated by the

motions of the two planets in their orbits. The

result is that there takes place a slow falling behind
170 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

in the longitudes of Mars presented centrally to the

earth at the same hour on successive nights. If we

could only see the planet for a minute each night,

we should think it to be slowly rotating backward

at the rate of 9. 6° of its own longitude a day. In

consequence any given marking can only be well

observed for about a fortnight consecutively, after

which it passes off the disk at the hours suitable

for observation, not to return again for a month. Its

times of showing are called presentations.

Now in the subject we are considering these

presentations mark epochs six weeks apart at which

the state of any marking may be examined in all

the drawings in which it might then appear, a per

centage of visibility deduced for it and then the

percentages for its several successive presentations

compared.

By this method results may be got of quantita

tive value, capable of approaching something like

exactitude from being each the mean of many

observations, and observations made with an eye to

no specific outcome — indeed, incapable of being so

adapted in advance as the result showed.

It is pleasing to note that to no one has the

method commended itself more than to Schiaparelli.

To welcome new procedures is the test of great

ness, for it betokens breadth of view. Most men's
THE CANALS AND OASES OF MARS 171

knowledge is cut on a bias of early acquisition, and

cannot be adapted to new habits of thought.

The percentages of visibility of the 109 canals at

each of their presentations having thus been obtained,

a tabulation of them showed what had been each

canal's history during the period it was under obser

vation. From perusal of the table could be learned

the canal's career, whether it had been a mere un

changing line upon the planet's disk, or whether for

reason peculiar to itself it had varied during the

interval. To show this the more easily, the per

centages were plotted upon coordinate paper, in

which the horizontal direction should represent the

time and the vertical the amount of the percentage.

Then the points so found could be joined by a

smooth curve, and the curve would instantly ac

quaint the eye with the vicissitudes of the canal's

career from start to finish. The curve, in fact,

would be its history graphically represented, and

furthermore, would furnish a sign-manual by which

it might be specifically known. The curve could be

considered the canal's cartouche, —after the manner

of the ideographs of the Egyptian kings, —sym

bolizing its achievements and distinguishing it at once

from others.

Since the height of the curve from the horizontal

base to which it stood referred denoted the degree of
172 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

visibility of the canal at the moment, any deviation in

this height along the course of the curve showed that

the canal was then changing in conspicuousness from

intrinsic cause. If the height grew greater, the canal

was on the increase ; if less, it was on the decline.

For precautions had already been taken to eliminate

every circumstance, it will be remembered, which

could affect the canal's appearance, except change in

the canal itself.

Not only increase or decrease in the canal stood

forth thus manifestly confessed, but any change in

the rate of such wax and wane also lay revealed.

In looking at them, one has only to remember that

the action proceeds from left to right and that the

ups and downs of the curve show exactly what that

action was.

Only one possible form out of them all indicates

that no action at all was going on —the straight

horizontal line. That cartouche signifies that its

canal was a dead, inert, unchanging phenomenon for

the period during which it was observed.

Now, of all the 109 canals examined, only three

cartouches came out as horizontal straight lines, and

even these it is possible to doubt. This is a most

telling bit of information. To begin with, it is an

obiter dictum of the most subtly emphatic sort upon

the reality of the canals. It states that the canals
 

Experiments AtheinTelescope Artificial Disks.

THE CANALS AND OASES OF MARS 173

cannot be optical or illusory phenomena of any kind

whatsoever without in the least going out of its way

to do so, as a judge might lay down some quite

indisputable point of law in the course of a more

particular charging of the jury. For an illusion

could no more exhibit intrinsic change than a ghost

could eat dinner without endangering its constitution.

The mere fact that it is an illusion or optical product

renders it incapable of spontaneous variation. Con

sequently, its cartouche would be a horizontal straight

line. As the cartouches are not such lines, we have

in them instant disproof of optical or illusory effects

of every kind.

Now, that the cartouches are curves shows that

the action in them is not uniform, but increases or

decreases more at one season than at another.

Furthermore, as the curves both rise and fall in the

course of their career, the action they typify must

consist of alternate wax and wane. It is, therefore,

periodic, which leads us again to the fact that it is

seasonal.

Thus, to take the canal Ceraunius, we note that

it dwindled from the time it was first observed, June 5

in the Martian calendar, till about the end of June.

It then started to increase in conspicuousness intrin

sically, in short to grow, until the early part of

August, subsequently to which it again declined,
174 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

vanishing after the first frost. Its cartouche further

shows that its waning was a slow process of extinc

tion, its wax a relatively sudden one.

Search forcicw From the knowledge about the individual canal

men" P ' which the cartouches thus afford, we advance to what

they prove capable of imparting by collective coor

dination with one another. To compare them it

was necessary to select some point of the cartouche

 

Cartouche of the Ceraunius

From a chart made by Professor Lowell.

adapted to comparison purposes. The one that sug

gested itself was the point where the curve fell to

a minimum. This point denoted the time at which

each canal began to increase in conspicuousness, the

dead point from which it rose. This dead point

was found for each cartouche, and starred on the

curve. When this had been done and the cartouches

tabled, at a first glance it seemed as if comparison

were hopeless for the detection of any underlying

principle and each cartouche only a law unto itself.

But by recalling that the canals exist upon the

surface of a globe and that the two directions for
THE CANALS AND OASES OF MARS 175

positioning a place upon a sphere are longitude and

latitude, we are led to try latitude as the more

promising of the two to furnish a clew.

To this end the canals were segregated according

to the zone on the planet in which they lay, and

their separate values for consecutive times combined

into a mean canal cartouche for the zone. This

was done for all the zones, and the mean cartouches

were then placed in a column descending according

to latitude.

The result was striking. Following down the Quickening of column, there is evident a delay in the time of .can ,a""d"

* ing to latitude.

occurrence of the minimum as we descend the

latitudes. This means that the canals started to in

crease from their dead point at successively later

epochs in proportion to their distance from the

planet's polar cap.

Now, before seeking to put this symbolism into

comprehensive terms, —to do which, I may add

parenthetically, is just as scientific and far more

philosophic than to leave the diagram as a cryptic

monument of a remarkable law, which it were

scientifically impious to interpret, —another fact ex

hibited by the diagram deserves to be brought out.

It appears, if attention be directed to it, that in all

the mean canal cartouches, the gradient is less be

fore the minimum than after it. What we saw to
176 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

occur in the Ceraunius is the expression of a general

law governing the canals. The curves fall slowly

to their lowest points, and rise sharply from them.

What this betokens will suggest itself on a moment's

thought. It means that the effects of a previous

motive force were slowly dying out in the first part

of the curves, and then a fresh impulse started

in to act. The new impulse was more instant

and of greater strength in its action, and by piec

ing the two parts of the curve together, we con

clude that it was in both cases an impulse which

acted fairly quickly and of which the effects took a

longer time to die out. The mean cartouches, then,

assure us of two quickenings and lead us to infer

that both were of the nature of forces speedily ap

plied and then withdrawn.

Quickening To interpret now the successive growth of the

canals latitudinally down the disk is our next con

cern. We saw that it started at the edges of the

polar cap. Now, such an origin in place at once

suggests an origin of causation as well, and further

more precludes all other. For the origin of time

was after the melting of the cap. First the- cap

melted, and then the canals began to appear. Those

nearest to the cap did so first, and then the others

in their order of distance from it, progressing in a

stately march down over the face of the disk.

starts at polar

cap,
THE CANALS AND OASES OF MARS 177

Thus we reach the deduction that water liberated

from the polar cap and thence carried down the disk

in regular progression is the cause of the latitudinal

quickening of the canals. A certain delay in the

action, together with the amount of darkening that

takes place, seems to negative the supposition that

what we see is the water itself.

On the other hand, vegetation would respond only

after a lapse of time necessary for it to sprout, —a

period of, say, two weeks, —and such tarrying would

account for the observed delay.

Vegetation, then, explains the behavior of the

canals. Not transference of water merely, but trans

formation consequent upon transference, furnishes

the key to the meaning of the cartouches. Not

the body of water, but the quickened spirit to which

it gives rise, produces the result we see. Set free

from its winter storage by the unlocking of the

bonds of its solid state, the water, accumulated as

snow, begins to flow and starts vegetation, which

becomes responsible for the increased visibility of the

canals.

Waked in this manner, the vegetal quickening,

following the water with equal step, but only after

due delay, passes down the disk, giving rise to those

resuscitations we mark through the telescope, and

attribute not without reason to seasonal change.
178 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

Change it is, and seasonal as well, yet it is not what

we know by the name in one important particular.

For it is a vernal quickening peculiar to Mars which

knows no counterpart on earth.

The earth as To realize this, we must try to see ourselves as

fromTace otners might see us. If we could do away with the

cloud-envelope which must to a great extent shield

our earth's domestic matters from prying astronomers

upon other orbs, and selecting some coign of vantage,

as, for example, Venus, scan the face of our familiar

abode from a distance sufficient to merge the local

in the general aspect, we should at intervals of six

months notice a most interesting and beautiful trans

formation spread over it. It is the vernal flush of

the earth's awakening from its winter's sleep that we

should then perceive. Starting from near the line

of the tropic, we should mark the surface turn

slowly virescent. As the tint deepened, we should

see it also spread, creeping gradually up the latitudes

until it stood within the Arctic Circle and actually

bordered the perpetual snow.

We should witness thus on the earth much what

we mark on Mars at intervals twice as long, because

there timed to the greater length of the Martian

year. But one striking difference would be patent

to the observer's eye : on earth the wave of

wakening would travel from equator to pole ; on
THE CANALS AND OASES OF MARS 179

Mars it journeys from pole to equator. So much

alike in their general detail, the two would thus be

parted by the opposite sense of the action to a di

versity which at first would seem to deny any like

ness in cause. To us the very meaning of seasonal

change hinges on the return of the sun due to our

change of aspect toward it. That the reverse could

by any reason be ascribed to the same means might

appear at first impossible.

Not so when we consider it with care. Apart

from the all-important matter of the seed, two fac

tors are concerned in the vegetal process, the absence

of either of which is equally fatal to the result. The

raw material, represented by oxygen, nitrogen, a few

salts, and water, is one of these ; the sun's rays

constitute the other. Unless it be called by the sun,

vegetation never wakes. But, furthermore, unless it

have water, it remains deaf to the call. Now, on

the earth water is, except in deserts, omnipresent.

The sun, on the other hand, is not always there.

After its departure south in the autumn, vegetation

must wait until its return in the spring.

Mars is otherwise circumstanced. Dependent like Melting first

us upon the periodic presence of the sun directly, it

is further dependent upon the same source indirectly

for its water-supply. Not having any surface water

except such as comes from the annual unlocking of

necessary on

Mars.
i8o MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

the snows of the polar cap, vegetation must wait

upon this unlocking before it can begin to sprout.

 

Arctic 7T-V

fiW ffo' *4& /&* f&a' /do' tfo' SW AW* ^0* «0* <t»*

PHEHOLOCX- Ct ltVf-:.\-£.4HTH A - Otiia Itoinf of Viflwtjlo"

• - J

Sprouting Times of Vegetation on the Earth

The earth is represented upside down, in direct comparison with Mars as we see

it in the telescope.

From a chart made by Professor Lowell.

The sun must have already gone north and

the polar snows before vegetation starts, and

melted

when
THE CANALS AND OASES OF MARS 181

it starts, it must do so at the north, where the water

arises, and then follow the frugal flood down the

disk. Thus, if it is to traverse the surface at all

with vegetation in its train, the showing must begin

at the pole and travel to the equator.

This, to us, inverse manner of vernal progression

is precisely what the cartouches exhibit. Their curves

of visibility show that the verdure wave is timed

not primarily to the simple return of the sun, but

to the subsequent advent of the water, and follows,

not the former up the parallels, but the latter down

the disk.

It is possible to gauge the speed of the latitudi- Speed of

nal sprouting of the vegetation, and therefore of the '^J*,,,,

advent of the water down the canals, by the differ

ence in time between the successive darkenings of

the canals of the several zones. Thus it appears

that it takes the water fifty-two days to descend

from latitude 72° N. to the equator, a distance

of 2650 miles. This means a speed of 51 miles

a day, or 2.1 miles per hour.

So, from our study, it appears that a definite law

governs the wax and wane of these strange things.

Quickened by the water let loose on the melting of

the polar cap, they rise rapidly to prominence, to

stay so for some months, and then slowly proceed

to die out again. Each in turn is thus affected, the
1 82 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

march of vivification stalking the latitudes with steady

stride down the surface of the disk. Nothing stops

f> Caj-4 ajttr

1 ' 1

1

 

PUl YOLOGVCtmto i -MIL'S

Sprouting Times of Vegetation on Mars

From a chart made by Professor Lowell.

its measured progress, or proves deterrent to its

course. One after the other each zone in order is

reached and traversed, till even the equator is crossed,
THE CANALS AND OASES OF MARS 183

and the advance invades the territory of the other

side. Following in its steps afar, comes its slower

wane. But already, from the other cap, has started

an impulse of like character that sweeps reversely

back again, travelling northward as the first went

south. Twice each Martian year is the main body

of the planet traversed by these antistrophic waves

of vegetal awakening, grandly oblivious to everything

but their own advance. Two seasons of growth it

therefore has, one coming from its arctic, one from

its antarctic, zone, its equator standing curiously be

holden semestrally to its poles.18

There is something stirring to thought in this

solidarity of movement, timed in cadence to the

passage of the year. Silent as it is, the eye seems

half to catch the measured tread of its advance as

the darkening of the canals sweeps on in progressive

unison of march. That it means life, not death, de

tracts no jot from the moving quality of its effect.

For all its peaceful purpose, the rhythmic majesty

of the action imposes a sense of power on the mind,

seeming in some better way to justify the planet's

name in its wholly Martian character. Called after

the god of war, the globe is true to its character in

the orderly precision of its stately processional change.
A!

CHAPTER VI

PROOFS OF LIFE ON MARS

STRONOMICAL discovery is of two kinds. If

it consist simply in adding another asteroid or

satellite to those already listed, obedience to the law of

gravitation, with subsequent corroboration of place,

alone is needed for belief. But if it relate to the detec

tion of an underlying truth as yet unrecognized, then

it is only to be unearthed by reasoning on facts after

they are obtained, and effects credence according to

one's capacity for weighing evidence. Breadth of mind

must match breadth of subject. For to plodders along

prescribed paths a far view fails of appeal ; conserva

tive settlers in a land differ in quality from pioneers.

DiKoveryof Discovery of a truth in the heavens varies in

truths similar not:l1ing) except the subject, from discovery of a crime

work. like on earth. the forcing The offorcing man's,ofsimply the secrets a pieceof ofthedetective sky is,

work. It is the finding of a cause in place of a cul

prit ; but the process is quite similar. Causa criminis

and causa discriminis differ only by a syllable.

Like, too, are, or should be, the methods em-

.84
PROOFS OF LIFE ON MARS 185

ployed. In astronomy, as in criminal investigation,

two kinds of testimony require to be secured. Cir

cumstantial evidence must first be marshalled, and then

a motive must be found. To omit the purpose as

irrelevant, and rest content with gathering the facts, is

really as inconclusive a procedure in science as in law,

and rarely ends in convincing, any more than in

properly convicting, anybody. For motive is just as

all-pervading a preliminary to cosmic as to human

events, only for lack, of fully comprehending it we call

the one a motive and the other a cause. Unless we

can succeed in assigning a sufficient reason for a given

set of observed phenomena, we have not greatly fur

thered the ends of knowledge and have done no more

than the clerkage of science. A theory is just as

necessary to give a working value to any body of facts

as a backbone is to higher animal locomotion. It

affords the data vertebrate support, fitting them for

the pursuit of what had otherwise eluded search.

Coordination is the end of science, the aim of all

attempt at learning what this universe may mean.

And coordination is only another name for theory, as

the law of gravitation witnesses. Now, to be valid, a

theory must fulfil two conditions : it must not be con

tradicted by any fact within its purview, and it must

assign an underlying thread of reason to explain all

the phenomena observed. Circumstantial evidence
1 86 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

must first lead to a suspect, and then this suspect

must prove equal to accounting for the facts.

Review of the and presenting to This Starting keep it willmethod itsitwith conduce orer at the the we ofbar shall toknown presentation understanding ofpursue reason. physical in tothelawsthe ofcasethe applicable detective before evidence ustoin;

n«ura c am ^e concent;ration of matter, we found that though in

of evidence. ' o

general the course of evolution of the earth and Mars

was similar, the smaller mass of Mars should have

caused it to differ eventually from the earth in some

important respects.

Three of these are noteworthy: (i) its surface

should be smoother than the earth's, (2) its oceans

relatively less, (3) its air scantier. On turning to Mars

itself we then saw that these three attributes of the

planet were precisely those the telescope disclosed.

(1) The planet's surface was singularly flat, being

quite devoid of mountains ; (2) its oceans in the past

covered at most three-eighths of its surface instead of

three-quarters, as with us; (3) its air was relatively

thin.

Aspect of We next showed that physical loss should, from

Mars corrobo- • *. n i j * . , 'I i . . , its smaller mass, nave caused it to age quicker, and r.ites principles ' o l '

of planetary that this aging should reveal itself by the more com

plete departure of what oceans it once possessed and

by the wider spread of deserts.
PROOFS OF LIFE ON MARS 187

Telescopic observation we then found asserted these

two peculiarities: (1) no oceans now exist on the

planet's surface ; (2) desert occupies five-eighths of it.

From such confirmation of the principles of planet

ary evolution from the present aspect of the planet

Mars, we went on to consider the two most essen

tial prerequisites to habitability : water and warmth.

Water we sought first ; and we found it in the polar

caps. The phenomena of the polar caps proved ex

plicable as consisting of water, and not as of anything

else. Still more important was the question of tem

perature. We took this up with particularity. We

found several factors to the problem not hitherto

reckoned with, and that when these were taken into

account the result came out entirely different from

what had previously been supposed. Instead of a

temperature prohibitive to life, one emerged from our

research entirely suitable for it. And this even more

for animals than plants. For a climate of extremes

was what that of Mars appeared to be, with the

summers warm. Now, investigations on earth have

shown that it is the temperature of the hottest season

that determines the existence of animals, cold much

more adversely affecting plants. Yet to the presence

of the latter the look of the disk conformed. Scan

ning it, we marked effects which could only be ex

plained as vegetation. Thus the conditions on Mars
1 88 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

Animal life life, showedeasonal Herethe themselves wechanges latter reached actually of hospitable tint. the end revealing oftowhat both itsmight presence greatdirectly orders by ofits be

byCanals mind.con-' but space byatfact: disclosed it Turning this had itsthat that mind, point itmadenimal invegetable could tothe would wenthe organic life berought thelife itplanet, could recognized face becould economy upknown.ot. ofwebefore thus Mars. witnessed only Notfreveal Across athe bymost byitself its planet. athesignificant surprising body, directly, gulf imprint For butf

observer with seem belief, markings thing.the positively butThere unthinking asviewed intelligence startling, onthus, theeye,inMartian might like theeyalight have prophecy appear diskofmade. deduction, were stange comjust See-nbeyond true.ven such they

Confronting the observer are lines and spots that

but impress him the more, as his study goes on, with

their non-natural look. So uncommonly regular are

they, and on such a scale, as to raise suspicion whether

they can be by nature regularly produced. Next to

one's own eyesight the best proof of this is the un

solicited indorsement it has received in the scepticism

their depiction invariably evokes. Those who have

not been privileged to see them find it well-nigh im

possible to believe that such things can be. Nor is
PROOFS OF LIFE ON MARS 189

this in the least surprising. But however consonant

with nescience to doubt the existence of the lines on

this score, to do so commits it to witness against itself

of the most damaging character the moment their exist

ence is proved. Now, assurance of actuality no longer

needs defence. The lines have not only been amply

proved to exist, but have actually been photographed,

and doubt has shifted its ground from existence to

character, a half retreat tantamount to a complete sur

render. For without equal investigation, to admit a

discovery and deny its description is like voting for a

bill and against its appropriation. It reminds one of

the advice of the old lawyer to a junior counsel:

" When you have no case, abuse the plaintiff's

attorney."

Unnatural regularity, the observations showed,

betrays itself in everything to do with the lines : in

their surprising straightness, their amazing uniformity

throughout, their exceeding tenuity, and their im

mense length. These traits, instead of disappearing,

the better the canals have been seen, as was confidently

prophesied, have only come out with greater insistence.

With increased study not only the assurance gains that

they are as described, but a mass of detail has been

added about them impossible to reconcile with any

natural known process.

A single instance of the methodism that confronts
190 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

 

us will serve to make this plain. The Lucus Ismenius

is a case in point. The marking so called consists of

two round spots each about seventy-five miles in

diameter. They lie close

together, not more than

fifty miles of ochre ground

parting their peripheries.

Into them converge a

number of canals —seven

doubles and five singles.

Now, the manner of these

meetings is curiously deLucitematic Double Ismenn, Canals Method revealing enter in which thetheTwin Sys- the just tailed. doublesenclosing embrace Threthem thofoases, the be

tween their two arms. The

four other doubles send a

line to each oasis to enter

it centrally. Which con

nection the double shall

adopt apparently depends

upon the angle at which

If the direction be nearly

vertical to the line of the two oases, the entrance

is central ; if parallel, it is an embrace. As for the

singles, they connect with one or the other oasis,

as the case may be. Such precise and methodical

1. Euphrates, double.

2. Hiddekel, double.

3. Protonilus, double.

4. Deuteronilus, double.

5. Astaboras, double.

6. Djihoun, double.

7. Arnon, convergent double.

8. Aroeris. 9. Sados.

10. Pallacopas. II. Phlhuth.

12. Naarmalcha, double.

13. Naarsares.

the approach is made.
PROOFS OF LIFE ON MARS 191

arrangement, thus marvellously articulated and de

tailed, discloses an orderliness so surprising, if on

nature's part, as to throw us at once into the arms of

the alternative as the least astonishing of the two.

Before passing on Not riven,

to reason upon the

fact, we note that

the characters men

tioned are them

selves enough to

negative all sup

positions of natural

cause. First, the

lines cannot be

rivers, since rivers

are never straight

and never uniform

in width. Now, we

see the canals so

well as to be quite

certain of their even

ness. The best proof of this is that, though each is

uniform, some are at least ten times the size of others.

If one of them dwindled en route, we should have

ample measure of the fact.

Nor can the lines be cracks in the surface, because Not cracks.

cracks also are not straight, and because cracks end

 

From a drawing by Professor Lowell.

The Moon, showing the Straight Wail

and Rill to the Right of Birt, May,

1905

These are palpable cracks like those in a ceiling,

and quite unlike the uniform canal lines of

Mars.
192 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

before finishing. We have examples of undoubted

cracks in more than one heavenly body, and their

appearance is quite unlike the look of the lines of

Mars. The moon offers such in many, if not all, of

her so-called rills.

To the most superficial view these suggest their

nature, but when carefully examined at Flagstaff",

corroboration of the fact came out in certain definite

characteristics. For the rills proved to be made of

parts which overlapped at their ends, one fractional

line taking up the course before the other had given

out, thus exactly reproducing the composition of the

cracks in any plaster ceiling.

Mercury bears testimony to the same effect. Its

lines, more difficult than the canals of Mars, —for

we see Mercury four times as far off when best

placed as we do Mars, —though roughly linear, are

not unnatural in appearance even at that great dis

tance, and show irregularities suggestive of cracks.*

In the markings on Venus, too, there is nothing

unnatural.

Other natural Rivers and cracks are the two most plausible sup

positions made to account for the lines on any theory prove impos- r J J

sibic. 0f natural causation. Other guesses have been in-

* Lately, at least two critics have stated that the descriptions of the spoke-like

markings seen on Venus at Flagstaff in 1897 and later, are inconsistent. The seeming

inconsistency is due to our own air, which sometimes defines them, sometimes not.

The important point about them is that the Venusian lines are irregular. .— P. L.
-a >

PC Oo o E O

 

 

From drawings byProfessor Lowell.

Mercury •€)C©

inlook frm platesnt Mercury, differing entirely the canals Mars. show the These irregular character oflines two onon The plates offact tha markings farther also show the libration eccentricity planet's orbit, from due toappear farther from illuminated from unilluminated and the elliptical separating terminator, being latter conour

portion ofdisk the libration swings the other. andccording o;nearer ason way

 
194 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

dulged in, such as that meteors by their passing

attraction have raised the lines as welts upon the

surface —welts easily allayed by application of the

fact that the lines change with the seasons, actually

disappearing at certain epochs, to revive again at

others. Such suggestions there are, but none have

been advanced to my knowledge that bear the most

cursory inspection.

Still more inexplicable on any natural hypothesis

is the systematized arrangement of the lines to form

a network over the whole planet. That the lines

should go directly from certain points to certain

others in an absolutely unswerving direction ; that

they should there meet lines that have come with

like directness from quite different points of depar

ture ; that sometimes more than ten of them should

thus rendezvous, and rarely less than six ; and that,

lastly, this state of intercommunication should be

true all over the disk, are phenomena that no natural

physical process that I can conceive of—and no

one else seems to have been able to, either —can

in the least explain. Yet this arrangement cannot

be due to chance, the probabilities against the lines

meeting one another in this orderly manner being

millions to one.

Oas« equally But the canals are not all that is wonderful ;

inexplicable. wg have tQ reck.on wit}1 the oases as well. These
PROOFS OF LIFE ON MARS 195

are remarkable, both in themselves and in their re

lation to the system of lines ; for they occur at the

junctions — only at the junctions, and virtually al

ways at the junctions. They are thus of the nature

of knots to the network. No explanation can be

given of this by purely physical laws.

So we might go on, with the enigma of the double

canals more and more mysterious the more one learns

about them —with

their strange posi

tioning on the planet

in the tropical belts;

with the curious

phenomenon ofcon

verging or wedgeshaped doubles de

scending to join

them from the pole ;

and with other facts

equally odd.

But long before the catalogue of geometric Artificiality curiosities ••111 had drawn to ,its close, 1 — for r it were suggests itself.

wearisome to count them all, and where even one

is so cogent, numbers do not add, —it becomes

apparent to any one capable of weighing evidence

that these things which so palpably imply artificiality

on their face cannot be natural products at all, but

 

A Corner of Mars, June 10, 1907
character of

the canals.

 

that 196 theMARSobserver AS THE apparently ABODE standsOFconfronted LIFE with

the workings of an intelligence akin to and there

fore appealing to his own. Whattypifies he isnotgazing the outon

come of natural

forces of an ele

mental kind, but the

artificial mind directing productitoftoa

Arethusa Lucus, April 15, 1903, showing Converging Canals from the North a purposed and defirolaR CaP nite end.

When once this standpoint is adopted, we begin

to see light. The recognition of artificiality puts

us on a track where we gather explanation as we

proceed.

Great-circle of Thus the oases, two attributes, find explanation one of the at once. canals,Thethe great- other

circle directness of the lines stands instantly inter

preted. On a sphere a great circle takes the

shortest distance between two points. It offers,

therefore, the most expeditious route from one place

to another. It is, then, that which, when possible,

intelligence would adopt. Even in the case of our

very accidented earth, our lines of communication

are being rectified every year as we progress in

mastery of our globe.

Equally suggestive is the shape of the oases, or
PROOFS OF LIFE ON MARS J97

spots, that button the lines together. For they circularity

show round. Now, a solid circle has the peculiar

property that the average distance from its centre

to all points in it is less than for any figure enclos

ing a like area. It would be the part of intelli

gence, then, to construct this figure whenever the

greatest amount of ground was to be reached for

tillage or any other purpose at the least expendi

ture of force.

No less telltale is their behavior ; and now not

only of the bare fact of artificiality, but of the

manner in which it came to be.

The extreme threads of the world-wide network Note of water of canals stand connected with the dark-blue patches TMn5t rous

a the action.

 

Canals from the South Polar

Cap, the White Bonnet at

the Top of the Picture,

June 6, 1907

Martian date, September 22.

Canals from the South Polar

Cap, Shown at the Top of

the Picture, October 25, 1907

Martian date, December 18.

at the edge of one or the other of the polar caps.

But they are not always visible. In the winter

season they fail to show. Not till the cap has
198 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

begun to melt, do they make their appearance, and

then they come out dark and strong. Now, the

cap in winter is formed of snow and ice that melts

as summer comes on. Here, then, the attentive

ear seems to catch the note of running water.

From their poleward origin the lines begin to

darken down the disk. One after the other takes

up the thread of visibility, to hand it on to the next

in place. So the strange communication travels,

carried from the arctic zone through the temperate

and the tropic ones on to the equator, and then be

yond it over into the planet's other hemisphere. A

flow is here apparent, journeying with measured

progress over the surface of this globe. Here, again,

the mental ear detects the sound of water percolat

ing down the latitudes.

Across what once were seas, but are seas no more,

the darkening of the lines advances, with the same

forthrightness as over the ochre continental tracts.

Blue-green areas of vegetation and arid wastes alike

are threaded by the silent deepening of tint. Lati

tude bars it not, nor character of country. It

great-circles the old sea bottoms as cheerfully as it

caravans the desert steppes. This persistency made

possible by the loss of what the seas once held, the

thought of water is once more thrust upon the

sense, its absence now as telling as its presence was
PROOFS OF LIFE ON MARS 199

before. One hears it in the very stillness the lack

of it promotes.

Then, as with quickened sense one listens, the

mind is aware of antiphonal response in the unlock

ing of the other cap to send its scanty hoardings

in similar rilling over the long-parched land. The

note of water confronts us thus at every turn of

this strange action. Water, then, must be the

word of the enigma : the clew that will lead us to

the unloosening of the riddle.

But though water it be, this is not the complete it> locomosolution unnatural ofcharacter the poblem; of the for,action as onedawnsponders, on one. the ""TMp

That a wave of progression passes through the

canals down the disk ; that something, then, pro

ceeds from the pole to the equator ; and that this

something can be none other than water, giving rise

to vegetation, sounds simple and forthright. The

startling character of the action is not at once

apparent. It becomes so only when we try to

account for the locomotion. When we so envisage

it, the transference turns out to be a most astound

ing and instructive thing.

To understand wherein lies its peculiarity, we must

consider the shape of the planet. For the planet is

flattened at the poles by jfa of its diameter. This, to

begin with, will make the action seem even stranger
200 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

than it is. It might seem at first as if the water in

going to the equator had to run twenty-one miles

uphill.

Mars' surface If Mars did not rotate, its figure would be a

in fluid equi- .

librium. sphere, bodies might exceptgive for it, suchbecause tidal deformation its own gravity as outside would

pull it into a shape similar in all directions. As

Mars rotates, its rotatory momentum bulges it at

the equator, changing the sphere into what is called

an oblate spheroid of the general form of an

orange. The ellipticity of a rotating mass is affected

not only by the size of the body and by the speed

of rotation, but by the distribution of the matter

composing it. Thus it is different for a homo

geneous body than for a heterogeneous one, and

differs according to the law of density from surface

to centre. Now it is an interesting fact that the

oblateness of Mars — j-^-g-, found by two indepen

dent methods quite independently applied ; one

from measurements of the planet made in 1894 at

Flagstaff by Mr. Douglass, reduced and discussed

by the director ; the other from the motions of the

satellites by Hermann Struve —should fall between

the value it would have, were it homogeneous, and

that which it would show did the density increase from

surface to centre in the same manner as on earth.

But we can see from theory that it should lie be
PROOFS OF LIFE ON MARS 201

tween these two extremes. For the compression

there is not so great as with the earth because of

Mars' smaller mass. In this we find another proof,

were any needed, that the evolution of both planets

was as sketched in our opening chapter. A rapidly

rotated mass of putty will take on the same shape.

In the case of Mars the stresses are so enormous

that for a long acting force, such as is here con

cerned, the planet, although probably as rigid as

steel, behaves as if its mass were plastic. The

result is that the direction of gravity is always per

pendicular to the surface at every point ; or, in

other words, the surface is in stable equilibrium.

Now, the fact that every point of the surface is Gravity inin equilibrium means that any particle of a liquid "p^0 1 J * * water transthere — as, for example, a drop of water —would ference.

not move, but would stay where it was. For all

the forces being exactly balanced to rest, their

resultant cannot solicit it to stir. Just as on the

surface of the earth, water upon a level stretch of

ground shows no tendency to move.

Consequently, any water set free near the pole

by the melting of the polar cap would stay where

it was liberated without the least inclination to go

elsewhere. The only force which would have the

slightest effect upon it might be its own head, if it

had any. Were the melting ice or snow that gave
202 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

birth to it ten feet thick, and it is more likely to be

less, it would give rise to an average head of water

of five feet. Now, a head of five feet could not

urge the water against surface friction more than a

few miles at most. So that any such impulse is

quite impotent to the effects we see.

Face to face, then, we find ourselves with a mo

tion of great magnitude occurring without visible or

physically imaginable cause. A body of water travels

3300 miles at the rate of 51 miles a day under no

material compulsion whatever.

It leaves the neighborhood of the pole, where it

was gravitationally at home, and wanders to the

equator, where gravitationally it was not wanted,

without the slightest prompting on the part of any

natural force. The deduction is inevitable ; it must

have been artificially conducted over the face of the

planet. We are left no alternative but to suppose

it intelligently carried to its end.

Nor is this the limit of the extraordinary per

formances shown by the progressive darkening of

the canals down the disk. Were they actuated by

natural forces, what they next do would be simply

incredible. For, not content with descending to the

equator without visible means of propulsion, once

arrived there, they promptly proceed to cross it into

the planet's other hemisphere and run up the lati
PROOFS OF LIFE ON MARS 203

 

tudes with equal celerity on the other side. Now,

any physical inducement given them to come equatorward must have its action reversed so soon as

that dividing-line was crossed. If, then, they were

in any way helped to the earlier part of their pere

grination by natural

forces, they would be

hindered by them in

this latter portion of

their career. Thus, the ' DjIHOUN

Only rational result of The " original" canalleaves from the tip

our discussion of the °f ;he s'"us- thc " duplica,e " from

higher up its coast.

canals is that these

things are not dependent on natural forces for their

action, but are artificial productions designed to the

end they so beautifully serve. In the canals of the

planet we are looking at the work of local intelligence

now dominant on Mars. Such is what the circum

stantial evidence points to unmistakably.

To detection of a motive we now turn. And

here it is our study of planetary evolution in gen

eral becomes of service. As a planet ages, its sur

face water grows scarce. Its oceans in time dry up,

its rivers cease to flow, its lakes evaporate. Its fauna,

if it have any, dependent as they are upon water for

life, must more and more be pushed to it for that

prime necessity to existence.
2o4 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

As the water leaves a planet, departing into space,

so much of it as does not sink out of sight into its

interior stands for a while a-tiptoe in its air before

taking final flight into the sky. In the planet's

economy it has ceased to be water, and become that

more ethereal thing, water-vapor. In one way and

place only does it ever in any amount descend to

earth again and take on even transiently its liquid

state. This is in the polar caps. The general meteorologic circulation of the planet deposits it there

throughout the winter months. From the cold of

the arctic latitudes its deposition takes the form of

snow or ice, and in consequence of this solid state

is largely tethered to the spot where it falls, remain

ing in situ until the returning sun melts it in the

spring. This is the state of things on Mars.

When this unlocking occurs, and while the water

is in its intermediate liquid state, between not easily

transportable ice and ungatherable vapor, it is in a

condition to be moved, and may be drawn upon for

consumption. Then, and then only, is it readily

available for use, and then, if ever, it must be

tapped.

Now, in the struggle for existence, water must be

got, and in the advanced condition of the planet this

is the only place where it is in storage and whence,

therefore, it may be had. Round the semestral release
 

Differentiation of the

Ganges

ofather the enough itplanet's Here, necessity, tothis it.intelligence their source then, naturally organic order IfPROOFS ends, thee iswill ofofaofsupply. economy mind become garnered its motive bethe OFusing, oforanisms toLIFEts aamust ofdivert store from high fact. procuring theONturn. that everything MARS stand depends Thereininisupon need 205 the no

most compelling kind for the

tapping of the polar caps and the

leading of the water they contain The Ganges is the double

over the surface of the planet : ^al, E°'ng, "T'Y

r little to the left from the the primal motive of self-preser- cen,re of ,he disk- I( 1 l will be noticed that the

Vation. No incentive COuld be right-hand line is stronger

than the left-hand one. stronger than this.

Our motive found being of the most drastic kind,

it remains now to examine whether it can be put

into execution.

As a planet ages, any organisms upon it would organisms share in its development. They must evolve with cTMveasa

* J planet ages.

it, indeed, or perish. At first they change only as

environment offers opportunity, in a lowly, uncon

scious way. But, as brain develops, they rise su

perior to such occasioning. Originally the organism

is the creature of its surroundings ; later it learns to

make them subservient to itself. In this way the
2o6 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

One species

supplants all

others.

organism avoids unfavorableness in the environment,

or turns unpropitious fortune to good use. Man

has acquired something of the art here on the earth,

and what with clothing himself in the first place, and

yoking natural forces in the second, lives in comfort

now where, in a state of nature, he would inconti

nently perish.

Such adaptation in mind, making it superior to

adaptation in body, is bound to occur in the organic

life on any planet, if it is to survive at all. For

conditions are in the end sure to reach a pass where

something more potent than body is required to cope

with them.

It is possible to apply a test to tell whether

such life existed or not. For certain signs would be

forthcoming were such intellect there. Increase of

intelligence would cause one species in the end to

prevail over all others, as it had prevailed over its

environment. What it found inconvenient or un

necessary to enslave, it would exterminate, as we have

obliterated the bison and domesticated the dog. This

species will thus become lord of the planet and

spread completely over its face. Any action it might

take would, in consequence, be planet-wide in its

showing.

Now, such is precisely what appears in the worldspread system of canals. That it joins the surface
PROOFS OF LIFE ON MARS 207

from pole to pole and girdles it at the equator be

trays a single purpose there at work. Not only does

one species possess the planet but even its subdivi

sions must labor harmoniously to a common aim.

Nations must have sunk their local patriotisms in a

wider breadth of view and the planet be a unit to the

general good.

As the being has conquered all others, so will it at To die of

last be threatened itself. In the growing scarcity of

water will arise the premonitions of its doom. To

secure what may yet be got will thus become the

forefront of its endeavor, to which all other questions

are secondary. Thus, if these beings are capable of

making their presence noticeable at all, their great

occupation should be that of water-getting, and

should be the first, because the most fundamental,

trace of their existence an outsider would be privi

leged to catch.

,The last stage in the expression of life upon a

planet's surface must be that just antecedent to its

dying of thirst. Whether it came to this pass by

simple exhaustion, as is the case with Mars, or by

rotary retardation, as is the case with Mercury and

Venus, the result would be all one to the planet

itself. Failure of its water-supply would be the

cause. To procure this indispensable would be its

last conscious effort.
208 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

End foreseen. With an intelligent population this inevitable end

would be long foreseen. Before it was upon the

denizens of the globe, preparations would have been

made to meet it. And this would be possible, for

the intelligence attained would be of an order to cor

respond. A planet's water-supply does not depart

in a moment. Long previous to any wholesale im

minence of default, local necessity must have begun

the reaching out to distant supply. Just as all our

large cities to-day go far to tap a stream or a lake,

so it must have been on Mars. Probably the be

ginnings were small and inconspicuous, as the water

at first locally gave out. From this it was a step

to greater distances, until necessity lured them even to

the pole. The very process, one of addition, in

stead of one of total synchronous construction, seems

to show stereotyped to us in the canals. These run

in their fashioning rather with partial than with teleologic intent, giving as much concern to halfway

points as to the goal itself, although in their action

now they are totally involved. The thing was not

done in a day, and by that very fact stamps the

more conclusively its artificial origin.

The ability of beings there to construct such

arteries of sustenance, two considerations will help

to make comprehensible : one of these minifies the

work, the other magnifies the workers. In the first
 u *o a E

8;Z S dg0XH

DmaH33Q

PROOFS OF LIFE ON MARS 209

place, it is not what we see that would have to be

constructed. The object of endeavor is not only the

water itself, but the products that water makes pos

sible. It is vegetation which is matter of imme

diate concern, water being of mediate employment.

This, then, is what would probably show. Just as

 

Northeast Corner of Aeria, JfLy 2-5, 1907

on the earth it is the irrigated strip of reclaimed

desert, and not the Nile itself, which would make

its presence evident across interplanetary space. If

these lines are irrigated bands of planting, the ver

tebral canal would be a mere invisible thread in the

midst of that to which it gave growth. This alone

would have to be made, and indeed it would prob

ably be covered to prevent evaporation.
210 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

Now, we have evidence that the canals are thus

composed of nerve and body. When they lie down,

they do not entirely vanish. Under the visual con

ditions of Flagstaff they may still be made out in

their dead season, the mere skeletons of themselves

as they later fill out. And even so we do not ac

tually see the nerve itself.

For the construction of these residuary filaments

we have a plethora of capabilities to draw upon : in

the first place, beings on a small planet could be

both bigger and more effective than on a larger one,,

because of the lesser gravity on the smaller body.

An elephant on Mars could jump like a gazelle.

In the second place, age means intelligence, enabling

them to yoke nature to their task, as we are yoking

electricity. Finally, the task itself would be seven

times as light. For gravity on the surface of

Mars is only about 38 per cent of what it is on

the surface of the earth ; and the work which can

be done against a force like gravity with the same

expenditure of energy is inversely as the square of

that force. A ditch, then, seven times the length

of one on earth could be dug as easily on Mars.

With this motive of self-preservation for clew, and

with a race equal to the emergency, we should ex

pect to note certain general phenomena. Both polar

caps would be pressed into service in order to utilize
PROOFS OF LIFE ON MARS 211

the whole available supply and also to accommodate

most easily the inhabitants of each hemisphere. We

should thus expect to find a system of conduits of

some sort world-wide in its distribution and running

at its northern and southern ends to termini in the

caps. This is precisely what the telescope reveals.

These means of communication should be, if possible,

straight, both for economy of space and of time, it

being especially necessary to avoid any wasteful

evaporation on the road. Construction of such would

needs be very difficult, if not impracticable, on earth,

owing to the often mountainous character of its sur

face. But on Mars this is not the case. As we have

seen, there are fortunately no mountains on Mars.

Thus the great obstacle to canals, and, in conse

quence, the great obstacle to their acceptance, is

providentially removed. Terrain offers the least of

objections, terror the greatest of spurs, to their con

struction.

Thus we see that not only should the execution

be possible, but that it should exhibit precisely the

phenomena we see.

It would be interesting, doubtless, to learn how Further are bodied these inhabitants that analysis reaches out p enomcnato touch. But body is the last thing we are likely

to know of them. Of their mind as embodied in

their works, we may learn much more ; and, after all,
212 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

is not that the more pregnant knowledge of the two ?

Something of this we have surveyed together. But

beyond the lime-light of assured deduction stand

many facts awaiting their turn to synthetic coordina

tion which we have not touched upon. It is proper

to mention some of them under due reserve, for

they constitute the bricks which, with others yet to

 

The Carets of Mars

Carets at the borders of the " seas " ; showing those of Icarii Luci and their resem

blance, in miniature, to the two forks of the Sabacus Sinus. These carets are

distinctive phenomena, marking the entrance of the canals from the dark

regions into the light. They are found at such points, and at such points only.

come, will some day be built up into a housing

whole.

Not least of these are those strange caret-shaped

dark spots at the points where the canals leave the

dark regions to adventure themselves into the light.

No canal thus circumstanced in position is apparently

without them, and, unlike the oases, they do not

show round. On the theory of canalization they are
PROOFS OF LIFE ON MARS 213

/

 

certainly well placed. We have seen that the bluegreen regions and the ochre ones lie undoubtedly

at different levels, the former standing much lower

than the latter.

Here, then, should occur difficulties in canalization

which would have to be overcome. Are these, then,

the evidence of their

surmounting ? They

certainly suggest the

fact.

Then the oases

themselves lure our

thoughts afield. Im

portant centres to the

canal system they are

on their face. But, if centres to that, they should

bear a like relation to what fashioned the canals.

That they dilate and dwindle seasonally points to

vegetation as their chief constituent, whence their

name. But behind, and informing this, must be the

bodied spirit of the whole. We are certainly justi

fied in regarding them as the apple of the eye of

Martian life — what corresponds with us to centres

of population.

An interesting phenomenon about the oases makes

this the more probable. Observation discloses that

the oases are given to change both of size and tone.

Mouths of Euphrates and Phison

The drawing shows the way in which each

branch of the two double canals enters the

desert from a common point of departure.
214 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

They fade at certain seasons, retaining only a rela

tively diminutive dark kernel. They are thus formed

of two parts, pulp and core. The pulp itself indi

cates vegetation, since it follows the same laws as the

canals ; the core may well be the evidence of the

permanent population. That the largest are some

75 miles across, seems to give sufficient space

for living and the means to live. If our cities

had to be their own sources of supply, they might

well be of this size. As it is, Tokio is ten miles by

ten, and London yet larger. But we must in this

be careful to part surmise from deduction.

Speculation Mars, In ourwe exposition have been ofcareful whattoweindulge have gleaned in no specula about

tion. The laws of physics and the present knowl

edge of geology and biology, affected by what

astronomy has to say of the former subject, have

conducted us, starting from the observations, to the

recognition of other intelligent life. We have care

fully considered the circumstantial evidence in the

case, and we have found that it points to intelli

gence acting on that other globe, and is incompatible

with anything else. We have, then, searched for

motive and have lighted on one which thoroughly

explains the evidence that observation offers. We

are justified, therefore, in believing that we have un

earthed the cause and our conclusion is this : that we

excluded.
PROOFS OF LIFE ON MARS 215

have in these strange features, which the telescope

reveals to us, witness that life, and life of no mean

order, at present inhabits the planet.

Part and parcel of this information is the order of

intelligence involved in the beings thus disclosed.

Peculiarly impressive is the thought that life on an

other world should thus have made its presence

known by its exercise of mind. That intelligence

should thus mutely communicate its existence to us

across the far stretches of space, itself remaining hid,

appeals to all that is highest and most far-reaching

in man himself. More satisfactory than strange this;

for in no other way could the habitation of the

planet have been revealed. It simply shows again

the supremacy of mind. Men live after they are

dead by what they have written while they were alive,

and the inhabitants of a planet tell of themselves

across space as do individuals athwart time, by the

same imprinting of their mind.

Thus, not only do the observations we have Our life not scanned lead us to the conclusion that Mars at this un'sue'

moment is inhabited, but they land us at the further

one that these denizens are of an order whose ac

quaintance was worth the making. Whether we

ever shall come to converse with them in any more

instant way is a question upon which science at

present has no data to decide. More important to
2i6 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

us is the fact that they exist, made all the more

interesting by their precedence of us in the path of

evolution. Their presence certainly ousts us from

any unique or self-centred position in the solar sys

tem, but so with the world did the Copernican

system the Ptolemaic, and the world survived this

deposing change. So may man. To all who have

a cosmoplanetary breadth of view it cannot but be

pregnant to contemplate extra-mundane life and to

realize that we have warrant for believing that such

life now inhabits the planet Mars.

Martian life it Ais, sadder cosmically interest speaking, attachesoonto such to pass existence away.: that To

our eventual descendants life on Mars will ho 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 glamour from the fact that

it has not long to last. For 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 no life at all.

Slowly but surely time will snuff it out. When the

last ember is thus extinguished, the planet will roll

a dead world through space, its evolutionary career

forever ended.

neanng its

end.
 

Appearance of Mars in 1905

PART II

NOTES

PART II. NOTES

On Moment of Momentum

The momentum of a body is the quantity of motion it

contains, which is its mass multiplied by its velocity, i.e.

the sum of the motions of all the particles composing it.

Its moment of momentum about any point is this quantity

into the perpendicular from the point upon its instanta

neous course. It is thus

m-v- r,

where m is its mass ;

v its velocity at right angles to the shortest distance

to the point ;

r its perpendicular distance from the point.

Suppose, now, two bodies, one x times the mass of the

other, to be revolving round each other in circles and, for

simplification, that both are homogeneous and non-rotating.

If m be their united mass, the relative velocity of one

about the other is

\r a) r

for a circular orbit, k2 being the unit force at unit distance.

Then the moment of momentum of the system round its

centre of gravity is

... , tnx ,ml mx , (i—x)m,m^ (l—x~)m (i—x)m • .—k—- • —r+mx • '—k— • * <— • r

m r* m m r* m

since the velocities of the bodies about their centre of

gravity and their distances from it are inversely as their

masses.

119
220 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

To find what partition renders this quantity a maximum,

we must differentiate it with regard to x and put the deriv

ative equal to zero. Thus

d\i —x-x2+x(i —xfl dx—x2 —L —* '—L = -= i — 2 x = o; ax ax

whence x — \, or the masses must be equal. That this

gives a maximum is shown by the second derivative,

d( I — 2 x)

Applying this to Jupiter and the Sun, we see that the

moment of momentum of the two is only ^\^ of what it

might be were the mass otherwise distributed to get the

greatest effect. In other words, the quantity of motion in

the solar system is almost the least possible ; and from the

principle of the conservation of the moment of momentum

of a system of bodies by their mutual action, this has

always been so.

For the system « Centauri, though the mass of its two

suns is only 2.14 that of the Sun's, the moment of momen

tum is about 2000 times as great.

The Connection of Meteorites with the Solar

System

The speed with which meteorites are observed to enter

the Earth's atmosphere is telltale of their relationship to

the solar system. For the velocity of a body moving on a

parabolic orbit with regard to the Sun, the greatest he can

control, may be calculated, and this velocity compared with

the observed ones. A solution of it by the writer by a

method of interest in itself, that of a rotating field of force,
NOTES 221

has been published in the Astronomical Journal for April

17, 1908, and is here reproduced.

Consider a system of axes f, 17, f, of which £ and 17 rotate

about £ with a uniform angular spin n. Take the origin

at the Sun, and let the £ axis continually pass through the

Earth supposed to travel in a circle. Then the space

velocities u, v, and w expressed in the moving axes £, t],

and f respectively, or the space rates of change of £, 77, if,

are u = I' — nr),

V = 7]' + n%,

w = ?,

where the accents denote the derivatives with respect to

the time. Similarly the accelerations or the forces which

they measure, X, Y, and Z expressed in the same axes, are

X= u' — nv,

Y=v'—nu,

Z = zv'.

Substituting for u, v, and « in the last equations their

values from the first, we have

aY>—ZLet [/ be the potential of the forces,

dU^=^=F'and^rz- v dU v . dU 7
222 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

In the rotating field of force U is a function of £, »?, and

£ only, since the time has been eliminated by the rotation.

Therefore

dU=dU d£ dU dy dU <%

dt d%' dt dv dt d$ ' dt

If the equations of motion be multiplied by

2££)2^>and2f dt dt dt

respectively, and added, they admit of an integral first

found by Jacobi, v2—n2r2=2U+ C,

in which vl = velocity of the particle relatively to the mov

ing axes, its relative not its space rate,

and r= its distance from the origin reckoned by the

same.

We shall suppose the particle to be moving in the plane

of the planet's motion, that of £, -q. The velocity of en

counter with the planet is thus made the greatest or the

least possible, according as the particle overtakes the

planet or meets it head on.

Calling V the space velocity of the particle, that is the

velocity with regard to fixed axes, and A the moment of

momentum with regard to the same at the moment, we

have V2 = v2 + 2 nr cos av1 + tPr2,

in which a is the angle between v1 and «r— hence

r cos « =P1t the perpendicular from the origin upon the

particle's line of motion in space, but A = v^p + fir2 by

taking moments about the origin, of the particle's motion

in the rotating plane plus that of the plane itself,

.•. v12—n2ri= V2—2nA,

whence V2— 2 nA = 2 U+ C.
NOTES 223

We determine C by the consideration that for a parabola

at infinity,

whence — since V=n — —0 and — andU=A0,= VM + tn- VI,

n A 2-^/M-VW+mVl C= — 2 nA = ,

where / is the parameter of the parabola and c the radius

of the planet's orbit.

Suppose now the particle to be just overtaking the

planet from behind, / will very approximately be 2 r, while

A =v1p + nri

will = V— v0-p + nr2,

in which v0 is the velocity of the planet in its orbit,

then v0/> = nr2

and A = r • V.

2 nA = 2 nr , V.

Let M= mass of the Sun,

m = mass of the planet,

r= c= radius of the planet's orbit,

p = distance from the Earth's centre to where the

meteor enters the atmosphere, which for round numbers

we may take at 3958.8 + 41 miles, or 4000 miles.

Then the attraction of the Sun on the particle is

that of the planet on the particle —j very approximately,

tn
224 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

and that of the planet on the Sun which is to be applied

reversed to bring the Sun to rest,

rThis latter force acts only in the line f.

Consequently, since X and Y are functions of f and 17

only, not involving /,

Tr M . m mi dU' ■. ,, ~ dU , VJ

r p r* d% dt]

our equation becomes

V* — 2nrV= 2 —H ->.)— 2 ;

\r p rl J r\

Completing the square on the left-hand side and extract

ing the square root, we have

\r p r1 J r

Letting M= 1 and r= 1 and determining k, the coef

ficient of proportionality, so that V comes out in miles per

second, —for k enters with the masses as PM unless the

unit of time be canonically chosen, we find, since v0 = nr,

V— v0 = the velocity relative to the Earth

= 10.321 miles a second when the particle

overtakes the Earth.

The Earth's effect in increasing the velocity which in

this case is the greatest possible is

28.822 — 26.163 = 2.659 miles a second.

In the other case, when the Earth encounters the particle

head on, 'i\ becomesA negative = - ?'!/> +andnr%C negative.

= _ ( F+Vq)p + nr\

— 2 n A = + 2tirV
NOTES 225

and

\r p r* J A

and

\r p ra / r

whence V+v0 = 4$-l97 miles a second, and the effect of

the Earth in increasing the meteor's velocity

= 26.696 — 26.163 = °533 mile a second.

The geometric explanation why the velocities cannot be

directly added is that when each body is supposed to act

alone the times involved in their actions are different,

while when they act together these are naturally the same.

In the latter case the velocity due the Sun hurries the

particle through the space faster than the Earth's pull

alone could, and so gives the Earth less time to act.

Now if, instead of moving in a parabolic or controlled

orbit, the meteor were travelling in a hyperbolic or uncon

trolled one, its speed of encountering the earth would be

greatly increased.

But there are no instances of meteors meeting the Earth

at speeds exceeding or even equalling 45.1 miles a second.

From this we perceive that they are not visitants from

outer space, travellers from other suns, but are all part

and parcel of the Sun's retinue, kin to Jupiter and the

Earth, the remains, indeed, of those from which the

planets were built up.

3

The Heat developed by Planetary Contraction

To find the heat evolved by the aggregation of particles

into a planetary mass and the subsequent shrinking of

that mass upon itself, we first find the work done by the

contraction and then evaluate it in terms of heat.
226 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

Let M' = mass within a radius r ;

then the work done by a shell dM' contracting under the

pull of M\ the mass inside it, from infinity to the radius

r is '<. PM'dM' PM'dM'

/*

where k2 is the force between unit masses at unit distance.

If the sphere be supposed homogeneous and M be the

mass of the nebula of radius a at any time,

M' = M —,, dM' = 3 M—dr. cr cP

. C'&M'dM' = C'3»M*^d 3pM* m

"Jo r Jo a6 S a '

the work done.

But the sphere is really heterogeneous, and to determine

the function of the density we proceed as follows :

The attraction, A, of the mass M' upon the shell dM' is:

A =

where p = the density. Let 4tP/ = the pressure at the point.

Then dp = —pAdr,

whence ^SW'^,

Now, as Laplace says, both solids and liquids resist com

pression more the more they are compressed. The most

simple expression of this fact is :

dp = hpdp,

which is Laplace's formula.

The Roche formula hardly gains in exactness enough to

offset its greater complexity, as Tisserand has shown.
NOTES 227

Whence, substituting Laplace's value for dp above,

dr . ATrtP 4- — = 1 Crpr*dr h

•Jo

Differentiating this, we have

+ i^i = o.

d2pr , /litB

The solution of this equation is, calling ^^-=itn h

pr=c sin mr + c1 cos mr;

but since the density p must remain finite at the centre

where r = o, c1 = o; and p = c sln mr. (2)

To find the two unknown parameters c and m, and thus

h, we have for the Earth, if p1 denote the density at the sur

face where r = 1,

and also since p1 =the c sinmean m =density 2.74,or supposed 2.5,= 5.53, allowing all rock, for the ocean(3);

5-53-a*-=| . „ , 4 C1 2 c sin mr , , . 47rra dr. (4) 3 Jo r w

In the determination of the work done, we must write

c sin tn -

a

P —

a

Then dM> = 4 irr^dr • —sin m -, r a

M' = 4 •n-at J r sin w -• a> J0 a

, ahV . r r r~\ = 4^—5- sin m —m- cosm- nr L a a aJ
228 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

r r r

sin m m - cos m -

whence M' = M -. sin tn — in cos in

,,,, M tn2r . r ,

dM' = — —— sm in - . dr

X

sm m — m cos ma* a

'o r (sin tn — m cos tnf

Jo la'

. o tnr mzr* , mr mr\dr sm^ — sin — cos — —

a a6 a a J r

_ m\m(\ — sin2 tn)— \ sin 2 m\ PM2 , .

2 (sin /« — w cos m)2 a

Since the work done by a mass J/ in cooling t degrees is

Majt, where <r is the specific heat of the body,

and J the mechanical equivalent of heat,

in the case of a homogeneous body

t = -5 • aJ" for contraction from oo to the

radius a, .3 £2]lf a

and therefore t = - ——(i ,) for contraction from the 5 aja a

radius a' to a. In the case of heterogeneity, the righthand members of the equations should be multiplied by

the ratio of (5) to (i).

During the evolution of the heat, radiation was steadily

draining it away, according to the fourth power of the sur

face temperature (Stefan's law). Convection meanwhile

was going on from the inside out, the quantity delivered

from one layer to the next being proportionate to their

differences of temperature dT, while this difference was

itself dependent on the areas involved, which were as

-H-s, and therefore their increase in the ratio —. If we r? r,
NOTES 229

assume in consequence that the surface was never hotter

than io,ooo° F. or 5556° C, we shall have a heat sufficient

to explain all the metamorphic and volcanic phenomena

exhibited by geology.

Energy let Loose during Contraction. Evaluated in Heat

Contraction from Infinity

to Present State Body supposed Homoge

neous.

Degrees Fahrenheit

Stone

Body supposed Hetero

geneous according to

Laplace's Assumption.

Degrees Fahrenheit

Stone Iron

Earth .

Mars ,

Moon .

Contraction from Meteoric

Density to Present State

Earth 3.5 to 5.5

Mars 3.5 to 0.71 x 5.5

Moon 3.5 to 0.66 x 5.5

80,520

16,303

3,665

11,262

584

44

146,400

29,642

6,664

20,476

1,062

80

89.377

17,118

3,8 12

12,501

613

46

162,504

3',"24

6,931

22,728

1,115

83

The Heights of Mountains on the Moon

For simplification consider a mountain on the apparent

lunar equator near the sunrise or sunset edge of the disk

when the Moon shows half-full. Then, if / = the apparent

distance its star-like summit seems off the terminator, —

the general dividing line between sunlight and shade :

r = the radius of the Moon ;

h = the height of the peak ;

we have P + r2 = (r + kf.
2jo MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

The lunar diameter being 2160 miles, this gives for a

mountain four miles high an apparent isolation from the

terminator of 93 miles, or 23 times its height. For one a

mile high, the distance is 46 miles or 46 times its height.

Thus the principle affords an indirect kind of magnifica

tion, relatively greater and greater inversely as the square

root of the height.

Heat acquired by the Moon

In the expression (5) for the work done by contraction

in the case of heterogeneity, m will vary with each planet,

since its determination depends upon both the surface and

the mean density of the contracting body. For the surface

density of the Moon we have a ground surface entirely ;

that is, one of rock. In consequence, we may perhaps

estimate it as being that of the rocky exterior of the Earth,

or 2.7, water being unity. The mean lunar density is 3.65.

Putting these values in place of those of the Earth in (3)

and (4), we get from the new (5) with the new m' the value

for the Moon's contracted heat given in the table.

Since the rate of changes of the concentric shells is as

r—t while dr is taken constant, the gradient of temperature

from the inside out will be greater, the smaller the body,

and convection in it be more rapid. Also its surface being

larger relatively to its volume, it would on that account

radiate more. That surface, therefore, could never attain

the degree of warmth of the other's in spite of the greater

radiation at higher temperatures. We shall probably be

within the mark if we take the surface temperature at its

maximum as proportionate to the total heat evolved. This

would give on the supposition of io,ooo° F. for the Earth,
NOTES 231

400° F. Abs. for the Moon, or — 590 below the freezing-point, a

temperature quite incompatible with volcanic phenomena.

Surface Heat of Mars

For Mars, where again the surface is wholly ground,

we have pf = 2.7, while the mean density of the planet is

3.93. With these data we obtain a new tn" and the

value for the heat evolved given in the table under

heterogeneity.

Following the same course as with the Moon, we get a

surface temperature for Mars at its maximum of 20000 F.

This is just below the melting-point of (cast) iron, which

is 2160° F. Such a temperature is insufficient for the dis

play of metamorphic or of volcanic action such as oc

curred on Earth. For the like reason the crumpling of

the crust in consequence of the planet's parting with its

internal heat must have been much less pronounced.

7

The Boiling-point of Water on Mars

The boiling-points of liquids are functions both of the

temperature and the pressure ; a lower temperature being

sufficient to cause ebullition if the pressure be less. On

the kinetic theory of gases the cause of this is at once

comprehensible. Boiling means that the particles of the

liquid generally have attained speed enough to throw off

the restraint of their neighbors and leave the surface.

Release may come about through increase of velocity, or,

in other words, increase of temperature, since temperature

is only another expression for the mean velocity-square
232 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

of the particles ; or by decrease of restraint, which means

decrease of the pressure upon them.

Gravity on the surface of Mars is only 38 per cent of

that at the surface of the Earth, and if the amount of

Martian air per unit of surface be $ that of the Earth, as

later we shall see to be probable, the pressure there

would be

/ = M,g, = 0.09 Mg,

where the unaccented letters refer to the Earth, the ac

cented to Mars. Whence the boiling-point would be

440 C. or iii°F.

The Paleozoic Sun

M. Blondet's explanation of the greater warmth of

paleozoic times was that the Sun then occupied a space

large enough to be able to shine on the pole even in mid

winter. To do this, the semidiameter of the Sun must

have subtended at the centre of the Earth an angle equal

to the tilt of the pole away from the Sun, or an angle of

23° 27'. This would give it a semidiameter of 37,000,000

miles, or a million miles larger than the mean distance of

Mercury.

Its present mean density is 1.39 times that of water.

The density of hydrogen, the lightest known gas, is

0.0000895 that of water at o° C. and under a pressure of

760 mm. at Lat. 450. The present diameter of the Sun

is 866,000 miles. Its density then must therefore have

been

, 8660003 c

d= 1.39- = 0.0000178, 370000003

or \ that of hydrogen.
NOTES 233

Such tenuous matter could hardly have given out any

heat at all. This is one insuperable objection. A second

is that to suppose that the Earth can have condensed to

a solid state while the Sun still remained of such gaseous

tenuity, its material more sparse than that of any known

gas, is to violate every conception of evolution. The

thing is mechanically impossible.

When we reflect that so eminent a geologist as M. de

Lapparent* espoused M. Blondet's hypothesis, we see how

necessary to geologic conceptions is a foundation for

them in astronomy.

9

Effect on the Earth of the Supposed Paleozoic Sun

As impossible the supposed paleozoic Sun proves from

the point of view of the Earth. For on critical examination

it turns out quite incapable of the climatic effect attributed

to it, even supposing it emitted heat enough to have any

effect at all.

To calculate its zonal influence we proceed as follows :

If a = coaltitude of the Sun, its insolation at the moment

at the confines of the atmosphere is as cos a. The relative

amount of the total insolation at a given latitude and for a

given declination during twenty-four hours, supposing the

Sun a point, and calling the insolation at the equator at the

equinox unity, is expressible by spherical triangles as :

/•cos"^- cot b • cot e) /Vos-1(— cot &• cot e) I = 2 I cosa •dA = 2\ cosb cos c-dA + sin b sine cos A . dA

. . .... . I co8-'(-c0ttcotc) = 2(cos 0 cos c . A + sin 0 sin c • sin A)\ ,

where cb = the codeclination colatitude of the of the place, sun,

A = the hour angle from noon ;

* " Traite Elenientaire de Geologie," par De Lapparent.
234 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

the limits of the integration being the meridian, where A =0

and the horizon where a = 900 and its cosine o, whence

o = cos b cos c + sin b sin c cos A,

or A = cos-1{— cot b cot c).

But the area of the supposed paleozoic Sun cannot be

considered a point because of its size. To deduce its effect

each bit of it which rises above the horizon of the place

must be taken into account and given weight inversely as

the square of its distance off.

For our purpose, however, a sufficiently accurate ap

proximation may be got by taking in each determination

what would be the centre of mass of the solar zone above

the latitude of the lowest central point visible supposing

the Sun a flat surface. The point whose codeclination is

considered then becomes

/*cos~V

_ 2 r*\n sin20 cos 6d6

r"2 f"°- I sim\*6de

where 0 = the angle from the pole of the ecliptic toward

its equator ;

and tan(23°.5—*).

& tan 23°.S

Something is omitted by this process because the visible

zone really descends lower at the sides than in the centre,

but on the other hand the effect on the tropical belt of the

Earth is relatively greater than on the polar ones because

of the less distance of the centre of the Sun. The result

is to understate the case against the supposed paleozoic

Sun and thus to increase the force of the reasoning.

From the table it appears that the climate in the polar

regions would be unaffected in midwinter and midsummer,

the only seasonal difference being that spring would come
NOTES 235

on somewhat earlier than now. Thus the seasons would

still exist and the polar climate not be tropical at all.

The heat due the insolation at the equator at the equinox

is taken as unity in both cases because no greater heat

there is to be accounted for then than now.

Insolation

Equator at Equinox = 1.00 in both cases.

Latitude Effective Declina

tion of Sun

Insolation Paleozoic

Sum Sun

Insolation Present

N.0 S.

0

Midwinter

90 0 0.00 O.OO

82 4.6 O.OO O.OO

66.5 13.0 O.06 O.OO

50 21. 1 0.21 0.I9

40 235 0.35 °-35

30 23-5 O.5I 0.51

20 N. O.66

Equinox

23-5 0.66

9° io.s O.29 0.00

82 6.3 0.2S 0.14

66.5 0.0 O.40 0.40

5° 0.0 O.64 0.64

40 0.0 O.77 0-77

3° 0.0 O.87 0.87

20 0.0

Midsummer

O.94 0.94

90 23S 1.25 1.2S

82 235 1.24 1.24

66.5 23-5 i.i5- '•'S50 235 1. 15 1.15

40 23-5 1.I5+ 1-15+

3° 23-5 113 1.13

20 23-5 1.09 1.09
236 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

10

On the Influence upon the Climate of Carbon

Dioxide in the Air

From some careful and elaborate calculations of Profes

sor Arrhenius it appears that an increase of carbonic acid

in our air to thrice its present amount would raise the tem

perature as follows :

Carbonic Acid = 3

Increase in Temperature over Carbonic Acid = 1

Latitude Dec.-Feb. March-May June-Aug. Sept.-Nov. Year

0 0 0 0 0 0

70-60 + 9.1 c. + 9-3 C + 9-4 C + 9-4 C + 9-3 C.

50-40 + 9-5 + 9-4 + 8.6 + 9-2 + 9-2

30-20 + 8.7 + 8.3 + 7-S + 7-9 + 8.1

I O-O + 7-4 + 7-3 + 7-2 + 7-5 + 7-3

We shall assume these figures to be correct and combine

with them a table showing the present temperature at

different latitudes in every month taken by him from

Dr. Buchan and here abbreviated.

Carbonic Acid = 1

Latitude Dec.-Feb. March-May JunE-AuG. Sept.-Nov. Year

0 0 0 O 0 0

70-60 ~ 21. 1 C. - 8.3 c. + 75 C - 6.0 C. — 7.0 C.

. 5°-4° - 1-4 + 7-8 + 18.7 + 9-7 + 8.7

30-20 + 17-0 + 21.5 + 26.0 + 23.0 + 21.9

10-0 + 25.5 + 25.8 + 25.4 + 25.5 + 25.5

From these two tables it appears that the increase of

temperature from increase of carbon dioxide in the air from
NOTES 237

1 to 3 would be only two degrees centigrade greater at 650 N.

than at the equator ; the mean for the year at the upper

latitude being still only + 2°-3 C. while it would be 32°.8 C.

at latitude 50 N. In the second place the seasons in the

polar regions would remain substantially what they are

now. For at latitude jo°-6o° we should have :

Temperature with Carbonic Acid = 3

Latitude Dec. -Feb. March-May JUNE-AuG. Sept.-Nov.

0

— 12.0 0 c. + 1.00 c.

+ 16.9O c.

70-60 N. + 340 c.

Such cold in winter would be prohibitive to tropic vege

tation, and polyp corals could certainly not flourish on it

seventeen degrees still farther north toward the pole.

Effect of Increased Carbon Dioxide upon Plants

Quite apart from the question of warmth it by no

means follows that an increase of carbon dioxide in the air

to three or four times its present amount would conduce

to vegetation. With common plants and under otherwise

present normal conditions it certainly does not. To de

termine what effect upon plants a greater percentage of

it than the present one would have, careful experiments

were performed in 1902 by Dr. Horace T. Brown, LL.D.,

F.R.S., and Mr. F. Escombe, B.Sc, F.L.S.* The plants

selected were ordinary flowering plants or angiosperms.

They found that an increase of carbonic acid in the at

mosphere to 1 1.4 parts in 10,000 from the normal amount

of 2.8 to 3* not Proceedings only hurt of thetheRoyalgrowth Society,of1902,theVol.plants LXX. but pre-
238 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

vented reproduction. The plants became sickly and were

unable to flower and seed. The experiment, of course,

does not show that a different effect might not be pro

duced on cryptogams such as constituted the flora of Car

boniferous times, nor does it demonstrate that with time

enough adaptation to such changed surroundings might

not result in a positive gain to the plants concerned ; but it

certainly affords no evidence in favor of either supposition.

n

Atmosphere of Mars

Amount. —Of the amount of the Martian atmosphere

we have no certain knowledge. From its effects we know

that such an atmosphere exists and these effects are com

patible with an air thinner than our own. With regard

to its density the best determination at present is to be

got from the planet's albedo, the albedo of a body being

its intrinsic brightness. Now from the albedo of various

rocks, of forests, and of snow, and from the relative

amounts of each that appear upon the Martian disk, we

may calculate, taken in connection with the whole albedo

of the planet, the proportionate albedoes of its surface

and its air. Nearly five-eighths of the surface is desert

which has an albedo of about .16, three-eighths a blue-green

with an albedo of .07, while less than one-sixth is of a

glistening white of roughly .75. These would combine to

give an albedo of .13. This, however, is illuminated by

so much only of sunlight as penetrates the air, about threequarters of the whole. Whence the apparent albedo of

the surface seen from without must be .10. Now as the

total albedo of the planet is .27, and .10 is from the sur

face, the remaining .17 must be the albedo of the air.

Assuming the densities of the mundane and of the

Martian atmospheres to be proportionate to their brilliancy,
NOTES 239

or as 75 to 1 7, which would seem something like the fact,

since the denser the air the more dust it would buoy up,

and it is chiefly by what it holds in suspension that we see

it, we have for the Martian air a density about two-ninths

of our own over each square unit of surface.

But, if the original mass of air on each planet was as

that planet's mass, we should have for the initial amounts

9.3 for the Earth to 1.0 for Mars. This would be dis

tributed as their respective surfaces, or in the ratio of 791 9*

to 42202, or as 3.5 to 1 ; which would give 2.7 times as

much air for the Earth per unit of surface. The differ

ence between — and —, or the amount the albedo im- 2.7 4.5

plies now present and the amount the planet would have

had, assuming proportionate masses to start with, may per

haps be attributed to the greater relative loss of air Mars

has sustained because of parting more quickly with its air

envelope.

Surface density of its air. —To get the density of the

Martian air at the surface of the planet, which is of course

a very different thing from the amount of air above that

surface, we must divide the amount by the relative gravity

there. For the density of an atmosphere at any height

being proportionate to its own decrease —if the density be

taken as proportional to the pressure, which is practically

true for gases at the atmospheric pressures considered, and

if the temperature be considered constant —then if D

denote the density at any point,

dD= —Dg- dx,

where g denotes the force of gravity at the surface of

the Earth and is constant for the distance concerned, and

x is reckoned outward from the surface.

Whence D = Ae'9*,

A being the density at the surface.
24o MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

Correspondingly, we have for Mars

A1 being the density of its air at its surface and^ gravity

there. For the whole mass of air over a given point we

have for the Earth

(Ddx= fAe-»*dx=—, •So •'o g

and similarly for Mars

•/'p D1dx = 4s

Taking g = i and therefore gl = .38, we have, since the

whole mass of air above a point on Earth is 4.5 what it is

on Mars,

^=4.5 A.•38

Whence as A = 30 inches or 760 mm. barometric pressure,

A1 = 2.5 inches, or 64 mm.

12

TheDivision Mean Temperature of Radiant Energy of Mars

So soon as a radiant ray strikes matter it suffers division

of its energy. Part of it is reflected, part absorbed, and

part transmitted. What is reflected is sent off again into

space, performing no work in the way of heating the body.

Now the amount reflected is not the same in all cases, de

pending for its proportion upon the character of the matter

the ray strikes.

If the surface of a planet be itself exposed unblanketed

by air, the absorbed and transmitted portions go to heat

the planet, directly or indirectly.

 
NOTES 241

If the planet be surrounded by air, the portion trans

mitted by this air, plus what is radiated or reflected from

it to the solid surface, must first be considered. Then,

upon this quota as a basis, must secondly be determined

how much the surface in its turn reflects. The balance

alone goes to warm the ground or ocean.

Light and Heat

Radiant energy is light, heat, or actinism, merely accord

ing to the effect we take note of. If our eyes were sensi

tive equally to all wave-lengths, we could gauge the amount

of heat A eceived by a body by the amount of light it re

flected, — that is, by its intrinsic brightness, or albedo.

For this percentage deducted from unity would leave the

percentage of heat received. This procedure may still be

applied, provided account be also taken of the heat deple

tion suffered by the invisible rays. Two problems, then,

confront us.

We must find the albedoes of the several planets in

order to compare one with another in its reception of heat,

and we must find the relation borne by the visible and in

visible rays to the subject. The latter problem may best

be attacked first.

Actinometers and pyrheliometers are instruments for

measuring in toto the heat received from the Sun ; and

they have been used by Violle, Crova, Hansky, and others

to the determination of this quantity at given places, and

so to a conclusion as to the amount of heat outside our air,

or the Solar Constant. Langley's great contribution to the

subject was the pointing out that the several wave-lengths

of the different rays were not of homogeneous action or

modification, and that to an exact determination of the

Solar Constant it is necessary to consider the action of
242 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

each separately, and then to sum them together. To this

end he invented his spectro-bolometer.

By means of this instrument Langley mapped the solar

radiation to an extension of the heat spectrum unsuspected

"before. He then carried it up Mt. Whitney in California, and

discovered two important facts : one, that the loss in the visi

ble part of the spectrum was much greater, not only actually,

but relatively to the rest, than had been supposed ; and the

other, that the greater the altitude at which the observations

were made, the larger the value obtained for the Solar Con

stant. Both of these are pertinent to our present inquiry.

With a rock-salt prism, instead of a glass one, he next

extended still farther the limits of the heat spectrum toward

the red, the effect of the solar radiation proving not neg

ligible as far as X = 1 5 /*.

In 1 90 1 Professor Very, who had been his assistant

earlier, published an important memoir on the Solar Con

stant, based upon these bolometric observations, but with

a value for it got from spectral curves derived from simul

taneous actinometric and bolometric determinations at

Camp Whitney and Lone Pine, and extended from them

outside the atmosphere by taking both air and dust effects

into account in selectively reflecting and diffracting the

energy waves. The air effect is proportionate to the air

mass, but the dust effect increases in greater ratio as one

nears the surface of the ground. The formulae he used

were adaptations of those by Rayleigh for accounting for

the selective reflection and diffraction of small particles.*

Energy of Visible and Invisible Spectrum

Planimetrical measurement of the area enclosed by the

curve deduced for outside our atmosphere gives the follow

ing results :

* U. S. Department of Agriculture, Weather Bureau, No. 254.
NOTES 243

Distribution of Heat in the Spectrum

Wave-lengths Percentage

xA = O.76 0.2 /i-0.393 fX-l 5 (A. f 2-S

32.

6S.S

IOO.

A = 0.393 ,1-0.76 n

giving for the

of the whole. Visible portion, 32 per cent,

Invisible portion, 68 per cent,

Loss of Heat in Traverse of the Air

Turning, now, from the question of the initial heat for

different parts of the spectrum at the time the solar radia

tion enters the air, we come next to consider the loss the

several rays sustain in their traverse of it.

From Very's curves for the radiation at the confines of

the atmosphere at Camp Whitney and at Lone Pine,

18 X = 1.2 fi, we get the amount transmitted at these two

stations, employing planimetric measurement as before,

and introducing with him the absorption in the red and

infra-red from the Alleghany measures, which he considers

the same at Lone Pine.

From Very's measures we have, calling the whole heat

at the confines of the atmosphere unity, —

 

Transmission

a= 1.9 M-15 *

Outside . . .

Camp Whitney

Lone Pine . .

50.

25.1
244 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

To get that for sea-level we shall take Crova's actinometric

measures at Montpellier (height 40 m.), made on August 13, 1888, at I2h 30m, under a barometer of 761 mm. Simul

taneously with these, other self-registering ones were taken

by him on Mt. Ventoux (height 2000 m.). The respective

calories he obtained were, —

MOSTPELUER

Aug. 13, I2h 30TM, 1888 0.975 calory,

bar. 761. 1 mm.

Mt. Ventoux

1.360 calories,

bar. 613.5 mmWe shall reduce these to the same scale as the Lone

Pine results, made with the pyrheliometer and used by

Very, to wit : —

Lone Pine giving Aug. for 11, 12, 14, I2h-I2iI 30TM, 1881. 1.533 calories, bar. 663 mm.

Montpellier

1. 180 calories

1.643 Mt. Ventoux calories

This value of 1. 180 is one which is probably about the

average of clear days in our latitude, the day in question

being registered by Crova as "very clear."

From these several data we find the following values

for the solar radiation received at the respective posts, in

calories in one column, in percentage of that entering the

atmosphere in another.

Solar Radiation

Bar. Calories Percentage

Outside the atmosphere . .

1-533

1. 180 1.OOO

.606

.490

0

500 mm.

663 mm.

761 mm.

3-127

1.896

•377
NOTES 245

The loss in the visible spectrum is almost wholly from

selective or general reflection and from diffraction, that in

the invisible one from selective absorption. The absorp

tive loss by bands in the former is only about 1 per cent

of the whole, and the loss by reflection in the latter prob

ably not over 7 per cent of its depletion.

In view of the fact that the absorption is known to take

place high up in the air, Very adopted the Alleghany

amount for Lone Pine, the difference being insensible;

but when it comes to Camp Whitney it is clear from the

above that 9 per cent of it is got rid of between X = 1.2 /*

and = 10 n by rising the 11,700 ft. from sea-level.

Depletion in Visible Rays

We may now find the depletion in the visible part of the

spectrum which is not in general the same as that for the

invisible part, decreasing relatively with the altitude and

reversely increasing as the air envelope becomes thicker.

It does this at a greater rate than the increase of the air

mass, because the particles suspended in the air —dust,

water globules, and ice —augment more rapidly than the air

mass as one approaches the ground.

Drawing the curve for transmission at the sea-level on

the same principles as those for outside the atmosphere at

Camp Whitney and at Lone Pine, and then measuring the

amounts of transmission of each within the limits of the

visual rays, from X = .393 fi the K line to X = .76 p

the A band, we get the following table : —
246 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

Transmission of Solar Radiation in the Visible Spectrum

Calories received

FROM THE

Whole Spectrum

Visible Portion Outside the atmosphere transmitted

Camp Whitney . . .

Lone Pine

Sea-level

 

1.000

.664

482

.210

The relative loss in the regions I, X = .393 p. to

\ = .f6fi, and II, \ = .y6fi to X=i.2/u, between the

several stations is as follows : —

1 11

Outside to Camp Whitney 0.105 0.029

Camp Whitney to Lone Pine .... 0.055 0.010

Lone Pine to sea-level 0.086 0.027

Light received from the Day Sky

To these transmissions must be added that part of the

solar radiation which is lost by reflection and diffraction

in the atmosphere before reaching the ground, but is re

flected again upon it, causing the brightness of the day

sky. This amount is sufficient to obliterate the stars.

Compared with direct sunlight, its ratio as determined by

Langley * is

Illumination

Sun

80

Sky

>9

or 24 per cent of the sun's light.

We must therefore increase the energy transmitted by

24 per cent of itself. This gives finally : —

* "Professional Papers of the Signal Service," Vol. 15.

 
NOTES 247

Transmission Portions reflected

into Space

Sea-level .... 0.21 100

IOO

26

0

74

Albedo of the Earth

Now the fraction of the incident energy in the visible

spectrum is that by which we see the body and is called

its albedo. The albedo of our air, then, comes out .74.

To get the whole albedo of the Earth we must add to it

the albedo of the surface.

The albedo of various rocks and of the ocean is as

follows :

White quartzite . . 0.25 Dark slate . 0.0975

Clay shale .... 0.16 Ocean . .

For forest we may perhaps take . 0.07

and snow according to purity . . 0.50-0.78

The percentages of distribution of surfaces being about

Ocean Forest 7210 per cent Steppes and desert

Polar caps . . .

10 per cent

6 per cent

we deduce 11 for the albedo of the surface. But this

being illuminated by only 25 per cent of the light outside

the air gives about 3 for its quota to the planet's illumina

tion. When finally the Earth's whole albedo to one view

ing it from space becomes .74 4- .03 = .77 albedo of the

Earth for a clear sky.

As the Earth's is about 50 per cent cloud-covered (see

the researches of Teisserenc de Bort on Nebulosity) and

the albedo of cloud is .72, we get .75 for the mean albedo

of the Earth.
248 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

Value of Loss of Light a Minimal One

That the value above found for the percentage trans

mission of solar radiation to the Earth's surface is a maxi

mal rather than a minimal amount, and the albedo a

minimal rather than a maximal one, is hinted by the fact

that the higher the observer ascends above the surface,

the greater his estimate of the solar constant becomes.

Thus Langley in his memoir on the Mt. Whitney expedi

tion says : —

" In accordance with the results of previous observers,

then, and of our own with other instruments, wefind a

larger value for the Solar Constant as we deduce it from

observations through a smaller air mass." The italics are

his.*

Depletion by Water-vapor on Mars

We are now in position to estimate the heat actually

received respectively at the surfaces of Mars and the

Earth. The visual part of the spectrum containing 32 per

cent of the incident solar radiation gives us its quota di

rectly from the albedo, since the heat received = 1 albedo.

The infra-red portion containing 65 per cent of the whole

depends upon the character of the air and of what it holds

in suspension. The greater bulk of the depletion in this

part of the spectrum comes from the absorption by watervapor, water itself, or ice and carbon dioxide. At the

Earth's surface the transmission in consequence is about

50 per cent ; at Camp Whitney it was about 59 per cent.

We might, therefore, suppose it still greater through the

air of Mars, which is very thin, and if we did so we should

find a still larger fraction of solar heat to be received by

the planet's surface ; so that such a supposition would

actually increase the cogency of the present argument.

* " Researches on Solar Heat," p. 68.
NOTES 249

But the very thinness of the air joined to the lesser gravity

at the surface of the planet would lower the boiling-point

of water to something like no0 F. The sublimation at

lower temperatures would be correspondingly increased.

Consequently the amount of water-vapor in the Martian

air must on that score be relatively greater than in our

own.

Carbon dioxide, Depletion becauseby ofCarbon its greater Dioxide specific gravity,

would also be in relatively greater amount, so far as that

cause is considered. For the planet would part, c&teris

paribus, with its lighter gases the quickest.

Whence, as regards both water-vapor and carbon

dioxide we have reason to think them in relatively greater

quantity than in our own air at corresponding barometric

pressure. We may therefore assume provisionally that

the absorption due this cause is what it is with us at

Camp Whitney, or about 40 per cent of the whole, leaving

60 per cent of the heat transmitted.

It is distinctly to be noted that though this estimate

lowers the determination of the heat received at the sur

face of Mars, what is thus lost in reception goes to make

the retention of the heat received all the greater.

The albedoesAlbedoes of the several of theplanets, Planetsaccording to the

latest determinations, those by Miiller at Potsdam, together

with that found above for the Earth and that obtained for

the Moon by Zollner, stand thus : —

Jupiter . . 0.75 f (using Struve's

Saturn . . 0.88 j latest diametral

Uranus . . 0.73 [ measures, .78)

(Zollner) Neptune . 0.63

Mercury . 0.17

Venus. . 0.92

Earth . • 0.75

Moon . . 0.17

Mars . . 0.27
250 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

We willHeat now apply received the argument by EarthfromandtheMars albedo.

Heat received at the Surfaces of Mars and the Earth

Per cent or Heat re

Per cent of ceived to Whole Energy

Whole Energy

Mars Earth

Visual spectrum ....

Total 32

65 7360

64

23

Infra-red JO

41.s

The ultra-violet rays slightly increase the depletion by

selective dispersion for both planets, and probably the

more for Mars.

Insolation

But this is not all. The above deduction applies only

to such sky as is clear. Now the Earth is cloud-covered

to the extent of 50 per cent of its surface on the average ;

Mars, except for about six Martian weeks, at the time of

the melting of the polar cap and over an area extending

some fifteen degrees from the pole, stands perpetually

unveiled. The surface thus fog-enveloped is .034 of its

hemisphere, and the time .23 per cent of the half year,

whence the total ratio of cloud to clear the whole year

through over the whole surface is less than 1 per cent.

The albedo of cloud being .72, its transmission, includ

ing absorption re-given out, cannot exceed .28 for the visi

ble spectrum, and may be taken as .20 for the whole.*

Consequently the effective heat received on this score by

* This agrees with Arrhenius' estimate of the heat transmissibility of cloud.
NOTES 251

the Earth is about as .20 x .50+ 1.00 x .50= .60, and for

Mars .99, giving the ratio between the two planets that

of .60 to .99.

Taking now Stefan's law that the radiation of a body

is as the fourth power of its temperature, and remember

ing that, since the two planets maintain their respective

mean annual temperatures, they must radiate as much

heat as they receive, we have the following equation

from which to find the mean annual temperature of Mars,

x, in which 459.4° + 6o° or 519.40 F. on the absolute

scale denotes the mean annual temperature of the

Earth: —

x: 519.4° :: '/i2 x .64 x .99: ^i.5242 x .415 x .60

or *- 519-4° HI.

giving x— 53 1. 4° Abs. =72° F. or 22° C.

Heat received and Heat retained

Such, then, would be the mean annual temperature of

the planet, were the heat retained as well there as here.

I am far from saying that such is the temperature. For

the retention is not the same on the two planets, being, on

account of its denser air, much better on the Earth. But

that such is the amount received is enough to suggest

very different ideas as to the climatic warmth from those

hitherto entertained.

Temperature deduced from Heat Retained

To obtain some idea of the heat retained and of the

temperature in consequence we may proceed in this way :

Let y = the radiant energy received at the surface of the

Earth.
252 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

y1 = that similarly received on Mars.

e = the relative emissivity or the coefficient of radia

tion from the surface of the Earth, giving the

ratio of the loss in twenty-four hours to the

amount received in the same time, due to

factors other than the transmissibility of the

air, which is separately considered.

e1 = the same coefficient for Mars.

Clouds transmit approximately 20 per cent of the heat

reaching them ; a clear sky at sea-level, 50 per cent.

Consequently as the sky is half the time cloudy, the mean

transmission through its air envelope for the Earth is

•35'.

For Mars it is .60 ev

To get, then, the mean temperature of the planet in

degrees, x, from the heat retained, which is the daily

mean receipt less the mean loss, we have the follow

ing equation, the mean temperature of the Earth being

[519.40 F. Abs.] 2880 C. above absolute zero:—

_-£_-- "^yi( 1 — -6o e} )

288.5" VXi — -35 e)

Determination of e

To find e we have the data that the fall in temperature

toward morning on the Earth under a clear night sky is

about 1 8° F. or io° C. ; under a cloudy one, about 7° F.

or 40 C. Taking the average day temperature from these

data at 292° Abs. on the centigrade scale, or 190 C, and

considering an average day sky and a clear night, we have

the transmission or loss

K-35 + -5oy or .425,?;
NOTES 253

while for an average day and a cloudy night it is

J<-35 + -2Q> or .275 e.

We form the following 292° — equation 10° -- -y/jjto1 determine — .425 e) e : —

2920 — 4° </Xi—.275 e)

whence e = .47.

Since the radiation by day is greater by about 1.15 than

by night, being as ?2L,

we have more approximately

K-40+.50>or .45 e

for a clear night and average day and

i(.40 + .2oy or .30 e

for a cloudy night under the same conditions.

This gives e = .46,

or substantially what it was before. It changes the final

result for the mean temperature of Mars by less than twotenths of a degree.

Determination of ey

Since in the mean the planet radiates as much heat as it

receives and

*-I.IO, y

the radiation must be in the same ratio. Whence, the loss

by radiation in twenty-four hours on Mars, so far as it

depends on the heat received, is

e1 = I.i e

= .51,
254 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

or by the more approximate calculation in the paragraph

above, it still

-.51.

Substituting these values in our equation (page 250), we

find x, the mean temperature of Mars,

= 8°7C.

or = 47°7 F.,

taking into account the heat radiated away as well as the

heat received and gauging the temperature by the heat

retained ; by the net, instead of the gross, amount of the

radiant energy received.

If we assume clouds to transmit less heat than 20 per

cent, we diminish y and increase (1 — .35*), so that the

ultimate result is not greatly altered.

If we take Arrhenius1 formula for the temperature T of the Earth's

surface as affected by the air-envelope, we have as determined in his

paper on the effect of carbon dioxide in the air : —

*A + M+ (1 - a)A(i + v) + JV( 1 + -)

T* = ^-> y(i + v - fiv)

where a = atmospheric absorption for solar heat,

/$ = atmospheric absorption for earth-surface heat,

A = Solar Constant, less loss by selective reflection by the air,

M = heat conveyed to the air from other points,

N= heat conveyed to the surface from other points,

v = 1 — albedo of the surface,

y = radiation constant.

The values for these quantities found bolometrically for a clear sky

are a = .50,

A = 1 — .79 x .32 = .747 = whole spectrum — albedo of the air x

visible portion,

fi = a approximately,

v = 1 — .11 = .89
NOTES 255

For the Earth in its entirety M= o and N—o, since what is lost by con

vection in one place is gained in another.

Applying this same formula to the case of Mars, we have similarly

a, = .40 approximately,

Ay = (1 — .17 x .32) = whole spectrum — albedo of its air x

'•5i242

visible portion

_ -946

I-S242

/?, = Oj approximately.

v, = 1 - .13 = .87.

Whence for the Earth under a clear sky

y4 _A{\ + y— yg)

y(i + v - py)'

and similarly for Mars, substituting its values for A, a, and fi.

Since in both a = /3 and y, = y approximately, we have for T1 for Mars,

T* A

But the Earth is .50 cloud-covered, and the transmission of cloud

being not more than .20 (the value he takes), we have finally

T* A .60'

whence

7\ = .974 T,

and T being 519.4° Abs. on the Fahrenheit,

7\ = 505.7°, that is, 46.30 F. or 8° C,

a result substantially the same as we have deduced.

Had we assumed fi to be .70 and to be in like proportion to a for

Mars, we should have had

T* =1.140-1

and T* =1.101^1,.ft

which gives not far from what we had before, since it lowers the result

ing temperature for Mars by only about 4° F. or 2° C.
256 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

13

A Dust Storm on Mars*

On May 25th at I5h 34m G. M. T., Mr. V. M. Slipher

noticed a large projection about halfway down the ter

minator of the planet. He at once notified me and we

then proceeded to observe it by turns.

What first impressed me was its size. This, both in

length and height, was excessive. The projection con

sisted of a long band of light, a little north of the centre

of the arc of the phase ellipse, lying parallel to the termi

nator but parted from it by a dark line half the band's own

width. To this effect I made a sketch of it at 15" 37TM.

The next thing to strike the eye was its color. This was

not white nor whitish but ochre-orange, closely assimilated

in tint to the subjacent parts of the disk, the region to the

north and west of the western end of the Deuteronilus.

Such distinctive complexion it kept throughout the time

it was visible. Coincidentally Baltia, then close on the

terminator and north of the projection, showed white.

The seeing was 5 on a scale of 10 —sufficiently good to

disclose the Phison and Euphrates double —the power

310 and the aperture that of the 24-inch.

As soon as possible micrometric measures were begun

of its position and length, the position angle taken being

that of the tangent to the terminator at the point directly

under the projection. For such tangent, together with the

projection's distance from the disk, furnishes all the data

necessary to determine its location. Measures of this angle

were repeated at intervals during the time of visibility. At 15" 4im the separation of the projection from the

terminator seemed to have sensibly lessened and I recorded

it in another sketch. The whole projection appeared to

* Reprint of Lowell Observatory Bulletin, No. I, June 9, 1903.
NOTES 257

have moved bodily in. At 5im, however, it seemed higher

again but then advanced rapidly toward the disk, for by 55TM

only the tip of it could be seen. Thus it showed for some minutes, being last seen for certain at i6h 8m and vanish

ing completely after 16" iom.

My measures and notes were as follows, where P. A.

denotes the position angle of the tangent to the terminator

as above described : —

ISh 37TM Projection on terminator — found about five min

utes before by Mr. Slipher. The projection is

long and is separated from the terminator by a

dark line. (Drawing.)

41 P. A. 200.°4 along terminator.

44 Projection less separated from terminator.

(Drawing.)

48 P. A. Projection I99.09-

51 Length projection o."o,2 ; now seems higher again.

55 Just about gone ; only the tip showing apparently.

No striking separation now.

i6h iom P. A. Projection I99.°8; only suspected by

glimpses ; surely seen last at i6h 8m.

Impression that projection had moved toward north as

regards Deuteronilus.

During the course of the observation a 12-in. diaphragm

was tried once but in this case without gain. At the same

time Mr. Slipher's measures were these : —

15" 42m (?) P. A. Projection 203.°7.

45 P. A. Projection 204.°o.

Length i."s8.

52 P. A. Projection 20i.°o.
258 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

Of the apparent perpendicular distance of the top of

the projection from the terminator our respective estimates

were : —

By me, Mr. .075 Slipher, of the.067radius of theofradius the disk. of the disk.

These estimates were got from measurements of our

drawings and from remembrance of the size of the pro

jection as compared with the size of the disk.

To find from these data the position of the projection

upon the planet we may proceed as follows: We shall

first determine the height of the highest point of the pro

jection above the planet's surface.

Taking the centre of the disk for origin and the minor

axis of the phase ellipse for the axis of x,

let d= perpendicular from the projection upon the ter

minator.

d1 = distance to the terminator perpendicular to the

phase axis.

r= distance the prpendicular from the centre d. of the disk to the foot of

t= distance of the projection from the centre.

yjr = angle between r and /.

X = exterior angle between d and r.

A = phase latitude of the tip, or its latitude in the aux

iliary circle to the phase ellipse.

<f> = angle th between projectiontheandtangent th major t theaxisterminator of the ellipse. under

a = radius of the disk, in seconds of arc.

a0 = radius of the disk in miles.

Aj = height of the projection in the plane of the circle

of its phase latitude.

h = its true height.
NOTES 259

f1 = angle in the plane of the phase latitude circle be

tween the tip of the projection and the point on

£ = same the terminator. in the plane passing through the origin, the

observer, and the tip.

x6and = angle y thebetween coordinates r andofthe theaxis footofofx.d.

xtPEBQ =—andangle position latitude position y1 those of ofangle theofthephase. theofcentre the foot the polarhase ofof the dvaxis. equator. disk.

By\ =alongitude property ofo the centre ellipse ofwetheavedisk.

tan0: tan<ft

cos2 if'

also f3 =

sin2 6 + sec2 E cos2 6

Then in the triangle made by r, d, and / we have

/2 = rf2+fa + 2 dr cos x,

and x = e — #>

whence we can find ylt dv and then A, since

sin A = &•

a

Now tan ft = — ' '

sin E • a cos A '

and Ax =(sec £1 — i)a0 • cos A,

then since

a1 =(a + hf + h? — 2(a + h)h1 cos A,

we find h.
26o MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

Since the height of the projection is always small with

regard to the radius of the disk, we may take

dx = approx., cos<£

and tan £i = 7—.—^ 7 approx., cos (f> sin h . a • cos A

and h = (sec fx — 1 )a0 . cos2 A approx.

If, as in the present case, the projection is nearly on the

phase equator, the process admits of still greater simplifi

cation. For then both <f> and A become small and

*tan ffc = —d:—- approx.,

asm.e

and h = (sec f — 1 )aQ approx.

estimate, Inhe ispresent instance the height distance, from my

k= 17 miles.

From Mr. Slipher's,

// = 14 miles.

We can now find the position. Were the body causing

the projection upon the surface of the sphere, with radius

unity, we should have / equal to the sine of the angle from

the centre of the disk to the tip of the projection. Since

in reality the projection is raised above the surface, it may

be considered to be upon the surface of another sphere

concentric with the first and of radius a + h. The point

directly under it will not, therefore, be where the tip ap

pears. But since codirectional lines from the same point,

in this case the common centre of the two spheres, are

altered in the ratio of their length, however projected, we

have for the point upon the planet's surface directly under

the projection a distance which we will call/.

a+ h
NOTES 261

The angle between its direction and that to the planet's

pole, or 7, is

while the distance in angular measure to that pole is the

colatitude of the centre. We thus have two sides and the

included angle of a spherical triangle given from which to

find the colatitude of the point or the third side and the

lower angle or the longitude of the point from the centre

of the disk.

Thus calculated the positions of the projection at the

several moments when the measures were taken prove to

be as subjoined.

G. M. Time Latitude Longitude

May 26, 15" 4lm

48

16 10

i8°3i'N.

19 44 N.

21 24 N.

39° AS'

39 59

40 33

From the successive positions of the centre of the pro

jection it appears that that centre changed its place during

the time of its visibility. It was three degrees farther

north and three-quarters of a degree farther west at the

end of the observations than it had been at their begin

ning. Such shift could be due to either of two causes.

Bodily transference over the planet's surface would account

for it ; or obliquity of tilt of the projection's medial line to

the terminator would produce a like effect. To which of

the two possible causes the result was to be attributed was

conclusively shown by the observations of the next day.

It is worth noticing that the shift was recorded in the

notes as impressing itself upon the eye apart from the

measures and confirmatory of them.

At 15" 51"" I measured the length of the projection

along the terminator and found it to be o."92. If we
262 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

allow o."l5 for irradiation, this makes it o."jy. Now the

diameter of the disk at the time was io."76 according to

Mr. Crommelin's ephemeris which takes the value to be

9. "30 at distance unity. Mr. Slipher's measure makes it

greater, but as his estimates from his drawing make it

less we may, perhaps, consider the above as a fair meas

ure. We have, then, for its value in degrees upon the

planet's surface and in miles respectively : —

Length of projection = 8.°2 = 300 miles.

On the next evening, May 27th, the return of the pro

jection's longitudes off the terminator was duly awaited.

They were due about 38'" later than on the preceding

night, but in order that if the projection had moved to the

eastward in the interval it might also be caught, observa

tions were begun some time beforehand. My notes and

measures read as follows : —

1 5h 40m Cannot certainly see anything on terminator,

though I can suspect at times something at

its centre but cannot be sure. Seeing 3.

44\ Suspect something just below centre of termi

52 Distinctly nator. suspicious.

58 Certainly have seen a small projection. P. A.

I95.°8. Seeing 4.

16 3 Thought to see it again.

5 P. A. 196.°6, had previously thought it higher

(up terminator). Were it anything like that

of last night, it must certainly have been seen.

17 Can see nothing on terminator. Seeing a good 5.

27 Suspect projection again but cannot be sure.

P. A. I96.°2. Have been observing about

half the time.
NOTES 263

16 39 No projection visible. Seeing 3.

40 No projection visible. Seeing 4.

41 No projection visible. Seeing 4.

44 No projection visible.

At i6h 15"TM I made a drawing of the whole planet under

seeing as good as on the night before, using an 18-inch

diaphragm upon the 24-inch objective, which diaphragm

was also employed throughout the observations recorded

above.

Mr. Slipher, who observed with me by turns, could not

detect any projection.

From these observations it is at once evident that the

something which caused the projection of May 26th, had

ceased to exist in situ and in size on May 27th. It had

changed its place as the position angles show, and

had greatly diminished in extent during the twenty-four

hours elapsed. For the position of the terminator with

regard to the surface was substantially the same as on the

day before. Q-P having changed in the interval only

+ o°.i3, B—o."o2, and E + o.°2g. The chief effect of

these slight alterations of phase aspect would have been

to delay the advent of the projection by about one minute

of time.

If we take now the mean of the two measures of the position angle at I5h 58m and i6h 5m, we find for the posi

tion of the tip of the projection at i6b 3""

G. M. T. Latitude Longitude

May 27, i^ 3m

and 16 27

25° 29' N.

25 45 N.

31° 43'

36 51

Comparing these positions with those of May 26th, we

see that the object causing the projection shifted its place
264 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

over the surface of the planet from

latitude i8° 31' N., longitude 390 45', on May 26th,

to latitude 250 29' N., longitude 31° 43', on May 27th,

taking the time of greatest apparition on both occasions.

It, therefore, moved 70 in latitude to 8° in longitude in the

twenty-four hours, or 390 miles, at the rate of sixteen miles

an hour. From this we infer: First, that it was not a

mountain or mountains illuminated by the sun ; and,

second, that it was what alone fits the observations, an

enormous cloud travelling northeast and dissipating as it

went.

Turning now from the observations of May 27th to those

of May 26th, with the recognition of the rate of shift de

duced from this comparison of the two sets, we see that

the change of place recorded by the first night's observa

tions is to be ascribed to the second of the two possible

suppositions mentioned in their discussion, or to the form

and orientation of the cloud. Its longer axis lay E. by S.

and W. by N. Its axis lay, then, roughly speaking, at

right angles to the direction of its motion. This is further

made evident by the measures of May 27th in which the

same tilt of the cloud's axis to the meridians is disclosed.

We shall now see that Mr. Slipher's observations tell

the same tale. If we deduce from his measures, as has

been done by Mr. Lampland, the resulting positions of the

apparent centre of the projection at different times on

May 26th, we find as follows : —

G. M. T. Latitude Longitude

,jh 43111

45

52 14° 52' N.

14 58 N.

19 8 N.

368° 21552'

y^^
NOTES 265

Here again is evident a tilt of the axis of the projection

to the meridians, such that the following end lay farther

north and farther west than the preceding end.

It is of interest to inquire under what conditions, diurnal

and seasonal, the cloud came into being. As to the time

of day, the terminator in question was the sunrise one.

The cloud, therefore, was first seen when it was half an

hour before sunrise upon its part of the planet, and con

tinued to be visible up to the rising of the sun. The place

was within the tropics, in the desert region to the south

of the Lacus Niliacus. With regard to the Martian season

of the year it was, in this the northern hemisphere of the

planet, at the time, according to the data of Crommelin's

excellent ephemeris, what corresponds to the first of

August with us and the sun was overhead in latitude

1 8° 7' N. The cloud, then, when first seen was almost

exactly under the sun. It then travelled north, dissipating

as it went, and was practically dissolved again by the time

it had reached 250 N. latitude.

Finally, its color leads me to believe it not a cloud of

water-vapor, but a cloud of dust. Other phenomena of the

planet bear out this supposition.

On May 28th no trace of it could be perceived by Mr.

Slipher.

14

Mars on the Cause of an Ice-Age

In a paper read some years ago before the American

Philosophical Society * the writer showed that Mars was at

present in the condition to offer a crucial criterion on the

correctness of Croll's ingenious theory as to the cause of

our own Glacial Epochs, and that the evidence presented by

the planet on the subject did not wholly support the theory.

* " Mars on Glacial Epochs." Proceedings Amer. Phil. Soc, Vol. XXXIX,

No. 164.
266 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

Croll's idea was that increased eccentricity of orbit such as

was true of the Earth in the past brought effects in its

train, —change of ocean currents, increased precipitation,

and so forth, —which caused a glaciation of the hemisphere

possessing the long cold winters and the short hot sum

mers. Study of Mars showed that this was putting the

cart before the horse; that increased precipitation from

whatever cause, and not increased eccentricity, was the

true primum mobile in the matter.

The evidence offered by Mars consisted in the greatest

and least size of its two polar caps. The minima were

known ; of the maxima that of the northern cap had been

determined in 1897 at the Lowell Observatory. But for

the southern cap only seasonal comparisons with the north

ern at corresponding dates enabled its maximum to be

inferred.

Since then the actual maxima of the southern cap

have been observed for the first time, and their direct data

more than support the deductions of the previous paper.

We may, therefore, conveniently review the subject

again.

The eccentricity of the Earth's orbit at present is .0168.

In the past it has been greater, fluctuating up and down

between values whose extreme upper limit is .0747, ac

cording to Leverrier's calculations. Its highest amounts

are those invoked to account for glacial epochs. At the

present time the orbit of Mars is possessed of an eccen

tricity about five and a half times our own, or .0933. It is,

therefore, now in a more favorable condition for eccen

tricity to tell than our Earth ever can have been.

The planet's axial tilt, too, upon which the differential

action of the eccentricity in the two hemispheres depends,

is about that of the Earth, being, according to the latest

measures, those at Flagstaff in 1907, 230 13' against the

Earth's 230 27'.
NOTES 267

Furthermore, these two quantities in the two orbits are

circumstanced much the same, the line of apsides and that

of the solstices falling in both not far apart. With Mars

the aphelion of the orbit lies in longitude 1530 19', the

summer solstice of the northern hemisphere in longitude

1760 48' ; with our Earth the aphelion is in longitude 2800

21', the summer solstice of the northern hemisphere in

longitude 2700. Thus both planets pass the points of

which the near coincidence is vital to the effective working

of the eccentricity, in fairly close succession. With Mars

the summer solstices follow perihelion and aphelion ; with

the Earth they precede them. This has the effect in the

northern hemisphere of Mars of curtailing the end of sum

mer as compared with its beginning, and of prolonging it

in the case of the Earth ; similarly affecting winter in the

other hemisphere. On the other hand, in the southern

hemisphere of Mars summer is delayed into the autumn,

while on the Earth it is clipped.

On Mars, then, at present eccentricity and tilt are such

as to counterpart what the Earth has had in the past, only

accentuated, while their positioning is not very different at

the moment in the two.

It becomes now of interest to note what the result of

such increased eccentricity is on Mars. It betrays itself

of course in the maxima and minima of the two caps.

For a glacial epoch means that the minimum of that hemi

sphere's cap is a maximum. What has been learned on

this score, then, is given in the following table : —
268 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

Mars

northMinima polar cap

Date Observer Time, © Size Mean

1886 . . . Schiaparelli 78°-i230 3°5 1888 . . . Schiaparelli I28°-I72° ? 7-°o

I90I . . . Lowell 93°-»4° 3°° 1903 . . . Lowell i24°-i5o° 5-°o

1905 .. . Lowell iio°-i490 4."6

I907 .. . Lowell 1450 7°7 5°i

Maxima

1897 . . .

1907 . . .

Lowell

Lowell

16 days after Aut. Equi.

8°

273°

77°

90°

souTH POLAR CAP 840

Minima

1862 . . . Lassell Schiaparelli

Douglass and

Lowell

70 days 313° after solstice

3'80-335°

5-°5

3-°8

o.°o 3°i

1879 . . •

1894 . . .

299°

Maxima

1903

1905

1907

Lowell

Lowell

Lowell

135°

117°

142°

104° 1040

103° 104°
NOTES 269

Perusal of the figures proves startling to the theory that

eccentricity of orbit is responsible for glacial epochs. For

they show that at its minimum the southern cap, which is

the cap of the hemisphere of extremes where glaciation

should appear, is not only not larger than the northern but

is actually the smaller of the two. And this in face of a

greater precipitation in that hemisphere betrayed by the

cap itself. For at its maximum it surpasses, as the table

shows, the northern cap at its corresponding season.

Eccentricity, therefore, in the case of Mars, far from caus

ing even a relative glacial epoch, produces exactly the

reverse.

From the respective maxima and minima of the Martian

caps it appears that the short hot summer of the hemi

sphere of extremes is able to dispose of the greater deposit

of snow of that hemisphere's long cold winter. Secondly,

that that hemisphere's precipitation is greater than that of

the short mild winter of the hemisphere of means; and

thirdly, that its short summer because hot is more effective

in melting the accumulated ice and snow than the long

but cooler summer of its antipodes. For it reduces a

larger maximum to start with to a smaller minimum in

the end.

With a certain amount of precipitation, then, to wit that

existent at the moment on Mars, eccentricity is powerless

to cause even an incipient glacial epoch. Suppose, now,

the precipitation to be increased generally over the planet.

The melting powers of the summers remain unchanged,

approximately, except that with more deposit more fog or

cloud would be raised which might tend to handicap the

hotter. With precipitation equally increased the deposit

would be more in the long cold winter in the climate of

extremes. Its maximum would be raised and relatively

to a greater extent than in the other hemisphere. But

since the quantity melted in the short hot summer re
270 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

mained as before or even diminished, the minimum would

be correspondingly raised until with increase of precipita

tion the minimum of the climate of extremes actually sur

passed the minimum of means and glaciation set in.

Here, then, we see that by altering the amount of the

precipitation, from any cause wltatsoever, an anti-glacial

condition is changed into a glacial one. No such upsetting

of state follows a change in the eccentricity, but merely a

greater or less accentuation of the phenomena. Eccen

tricity affects the degree, precipitation the very sign of the

resulting action. Although, therefore, both are essential

to any distinction between the condition of the two hemi

spheres, it is the amount of the precipitation that really

settles the matter. And the cause of the amount need

have nothing to do with the eccentricity. Whatever con

duces to sufficient increase of precipitation will cause a

glacial epoch irrespective of a large or a small eccentricity.

Furthermore, as no planet at any time is without some

eccentricity of orbit, it is precipitation that determines a

glacial epoch or the reverse. Mars, then, throws this light

upon the problem : it teaches us that glaciation need not

result from eccentricity, and never will do so unaided by

a factor which has no necessary dependence on eccen

tricity at all.

IS

Tidal Effects

By 'unhampered age' may be denoted that placid course

of evolution by which a planet goes to its death from in

trinsic cause alone. For a planet, like a man, may end its

life for other reason than senility. Like him it is subject

to many vicissitudes in the course of its career. One cause

of world-extinction, perhaps the commonest of all, is the

tidal action due the Sun. For every planet that rotates
NOTES 271

angularly faster or slower than it revolves is perforce sub

jected to enormous partitive strains. Since its body is not

absolutely rigid these strains become tides, superficial or

bodily, which act as brakes to bring the rotation and the

revolution to coincide. Eventually such synchronousness

must result ; it is only a question of time. When it befalls

the planet that body ever after turns in perpetuity the

same face to the Sun. This fate has already befallen

Mercury and Venus, and must in time overtake the rest.

One side of the planet is thenceforward forever baked ;

the other forever frozen. Whatever water originally ex

isted there will have circulated, caught up by the heated

currents of the sunward side, to the hemisphere that is

turned away, there to be deposited as ice. This alone

would terminate all possibility of life, and the planet roll

a mummified mass through space.

16

On the Visibility of Fine Lines

The minimum visibile of the normal human eye is com

monly taken at 1' of arc In other words, the separating

power of the eye by which two objects may be distin

guished as distinct has this for its minimum distance of

effectibility. The limit is not, however, the same for all

eyes, varying from individual to individual, and depends

upon what is known to oculists as acuteness of vision. It

is something quite apart from near-sight or far-sight and

resides apparently in the fineness of the retinal rods, some

eyes having these much coarser than others. Nor is it the

same thing as sensitiveness to impression, though the one

ability is often taken erroneously as guarantee for the

other. Eyes, however, have two quite distinct capabilities,

sensitiveness or the power of distinguishing faint contrasts
272 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

such as detecting faint stars, and acuteness or the power

of resolution of parts to which is due the detection of plan

etary detail. The existence of the one faculty does not in

the least vouch for the presence of the other. Indeed,

experience with many observers has shown me that the

two are rarely, if ever, found in a high degree together.

Although points may not be distinguished as a rule if

they lie closer together than i' of arc, it is an interesting

and, at first, curious fact that a line, having a breadth

much less than the minimum visibile and much less even

than what would enable it to be seen were it a point, can

be distinctly and easily perceived. Michelson has shown

theoretically that this must be so, and has further experi mented practically to the same conclusion, ^fore know

ing of Michelson's work some experiments of my own had

shown me that such was the case, as indeed every one un

consciously evidences when he sees a spider-web. My

first experiments sufficed to show me a line whose breadth

was less than 2. "6 of arc. It was a telegraph wire, seen

against the sky, whose distance away was then measured.

Recently I repeated the experiment with more care and

with the results which follow.

On May 6 of this year a wire was stretched by Mr.

Lampland and the writer from the top of the dome to the

top of the anemometer stand near it in such a manner that

it could be seen against the sky down a vista of half a

mile to the west. The wire was an iron wire of the usual

kind, .0726 inch in diameter, brownish and somewhat

rusty. In color, therefore, it was not very dark. We be

gan to observe it from a distance of 500 feet, at which it

was instantly unmistakable, up to 2100 feet, where it wholly

ceased to be visible. The distances at which it became

less and less perceptible, the character of that perception,

and the angular width of the wire at the several distances

are given in the subjoined table. The remarks are mine,
NOTES *73

from my observations, but they were almost exactly con

curred in by Mr. Lampland.

Visibility of a Wire .0726 Inch in Diameter

Distance Angular

Width Remarks

500 feet 2."50 Evident at first glance.

600 feet 2."o8 Evident at first glance.

700 feet 1. "78 Evident at first glance.

800 feet 1."56 Evident at first glance.

900 feet 1 -"39 Evident at first glance.

1000 feet 1. "25 Easily evident.

1 1 00 feet V"'3 Perfectly visible.

1200 feet iV'03 Distinctly visible.

1300 feet o."96 Visible but not easy.

1400 feet o."89 Visible but not difficult.

1500 feet o."83 Visible but difficult.

1600 feet o."78 Glimpses only.

1700 feet o."73 f Well glimpsed. Imaginary wires glimpsed

\ but not surely.

1800 feet o."69 f Well glimpsed. Imaginary wires glimpsed

[ but not surely.

1900 feet o."66 Glimpses not sure.

2000 feet 0."62 It and imaginary lines of equal impression.

2100 feet o."59 Not visible.

It is interesting to note the fact that at a certain stage

of difficulty in detection, imaginary wires or impressions

of wires which did not exist were reported by the eyes or

the optic lobes to the brain and that such could be distin

guished from the true, not, be it understood, from their

position, but from direct subconsciousness of the impres

sions they made. The sight of a wire carried with it at

once a sense either of certainty or of doubt, and this as

the table shows was a concomitant of the strength of the

impression. Up to 1800 feet the eye or brain could dis
274 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

tinguish of itself, apart from position, the reality or questionableness of the impression. At 1900 feet and still

more at 2000 feet consciousness was unable to part the

false from the true.

To apply this now to those tenuous lines upon the sur

face of Mars known as the "canals" of the planet It

may be well to say in premise that, when seen under good

conditions of air and observer, they are not bands or

washes or separating shades, but perfectly definite lines

which range all the way from such as might be made by

a pen and india-ink to gossamers like spider-webs seen to

the naked eye. As a mean case of distance we may take

the planet to subtend in diameter an arc of 14". Suppose

also that a power of 310 be used, which is also a mean

power. If the telescope lost no light and the definition

through it were as good as to the naked eye, it should be

possible to observe a line on the planet whose width was

o "6q 1

' 77 x of the planet's diameter. 14. "o 310

Now the planet's diameter in miles is 4220 ±. In miles

then the width would be

4220 X o."6q77^ x 1 ,

i4."o 310

or If of a mile. Say f of a mile.

Were the planet at a near opposition when its apparent

diameter is over 24" and a power of 450 were used, we

should have about one-quarter of this for the width which

might be seen, or

.fa of a mile.

As the telescope does lose both in light and in definition

over the naked eye, it would not be possible to reach this

limit. If, however, we suppose the naked eye to be three

times as effective, it would seem not to favor the telescope.

v
NOTES 275

At this estimate J mile would be the limiting perceptible

width.

Why a line can be seen when its width is but jfe of the

minimum visibile seems to be due to summation of sensa

tions. What would be far too minute an effect upon any

one retinal rod to produce an impression becomes quite

recognizable in consciousness when many in a row are sim

ilarly excited. Psychologically it is of interest to note that

there are stimuli perceptible so faint and so fleeting as to

be even below this limit, and that, unable to rise into direct

consciousness, leave only an indefinite subconsciousness

of their presence which the brain is unable to part from

its own internal reverberations. It is a narrow Umbo, this

twilight of doubt, since, as we see in the present instance,

below o."S9 the object produced no effect, and above o."69

the brain was cognizant of objectivity as such.

Notes on Visual Experiment

The following visual experiment was performed at the

request of Director Lowell, and the notes may be con

sidered as supplementary to those of the experiment on

the visibility of a wire * —the experiments being identical,

except that in the last instance a disk, having a fine line

of same width as wire ruled across its face, was observed

along with the wire.

As a check against any influence that a knowledge of

the positions of the wire and line might introduce, the ob

server V. M. S. had nothing to do with the preparation and

arrangement of the experiment, and made his observations

going toward the disk and wire, the observations being

begun at the extreme limit of visibility for the line and

wire.

* Lowell Observatory, Bulletin No. 2.
276 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

For each series the results are practically the same for

the two observers — the one having no knowledge as to

the positions of the objects and making his observations

going towards them, the other beginning observations near

the objects and going away from them.

V. M. Slipher.

C. O. Lampland.

December, 1903.

Wooden disk eight feet in diameter, covered with white

paper, with fine blue line, .07 inch wide, ruled across its

face. Line on disk makes about same angle with hori

zontal as wire stretched above it. Disk suspended from

cable, stretched from top of dome to a pine to the south

west. Plane of disk nearly in the meridian. Wire same

width (.07 in.) and color as that used in the original ex

periment. (Lowell Observatory Bulletin No. 2.)

FIRST SERIES

Station

100 ft. Wire and lines on disk very distinct. —c. O. L. Angular width : disk, 40 35' ; lines, I2."48.

200 ft. Line stronger than wire. — v. m. S.

About the same as the 100 ft. station. —c. O. L.

Angular width : disk, 2° 17/5 ; lines, 6."24-

300 ft. Line stronger than wire. —v. M. s.

Both wire and line on disk strong and well seen. Perhaps

line the stronger. —c. o. L.

Angular width : disk, 1° 31/7 ; lines, 4"l6.

400 ft. Line the stronger. Probably due to background offering

greater contrast. — v. m. s.

About as well seen and as evident as at 300 ft. station. —c. o. L.

Angular width : disk, i°8.'8; lines, 3. "12.

500 ft. Wire and line equally sharp and evident. —v. m. s.

Wire and line evident and distinct at first glance. — C O. L.

Angular width : disk, 55'; lines, 2. "50.

600 ft. Disk in shadow, yet line well seen, as is also wire. Line more

permanently visible, perhaps. — v. m. s.
NOTES 277

Line on disk distinct and evident, but becoming more difficult.

Illumination very bright and glaring. Wire distinct and

evident first glance. —c. o. l.

Angular width : disk, 45/8 ; lines, 2. "08.

700 ft. Inaccessible. —v. m. s.

Poor station for observation. —c. o. L.

Angular width : disk, 39/3 ; lines, I ."78.

800 ft. Inaccessible. — v. M. s.

Wire comes out very distinctly —stronger at times. Line on

disk becoming more difficult —somewhat difficult at times

from this station, but perfectly evident with good illumina

tion. —c. o. L.

Angular width : disk, 34/4; lines, 1. "56.

900 ft. Can see wire. Disk in shadow of tree. —V. M. s.

Angular width : disk, 30/6; lines, 1. "39.

1000 ft. Wire more difficult but perfectly evident. Line on disk also

becoming difficult, but glimpse it definitely with good illumi

nation. — c. O. L.

Angular width : disk, 27/5 ; lines, 1."25.

1 100 ft. Can see wire and line. Shadow is on disk. —v. M. S.

Bothc. o.wire1.. and line on disk perfectly and distinctly seen. —

Angular width : disk, 25'; lines, 1. "14.

1200 ft. Certainly glimpse line; poor glimpses of wire. —v. M. S.

Wire rather difficult and at times not seen, but glimpsed per

fectly at intervals. Line on disk glimpsed distinctly at

times when angle of illumination changes. —c. O. L.

Angular width : disk, 22/9; lines, 1."04.

1300 ft. Certainly glimpse line and wire. —v. M. s.

Wire difficult now, but glimpsed at times. Line on disk fairly

well glimpsed as wind swings disk, but becoming difficult —

somewhat faint. — c. o. l.

Angular width : disk, 21/2; lines, o."96.

1400 ft. Do not glimpse either wire or line. Hasty observations. —

v. m. s.

Lineandondifficult. disk glimpsed Wire atglimpsed times asbut diskdifficult. swings,—butc.faint, o. l.diffuse,

Angular width : disk, 19/6 ; lines, o."89-

1450 ft. Certainly glimpsed wire. Cannot certainly glimpse line. I

get glimpses of a fictitious as well as what I take to be a

real line. It is (if glimpsed) illy defined. —v. m. s.

Angular width : disk, 19' ; lines, o."86.
278 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

1500 ft. Wire at this station extremely difficult. Not certain that I

glimpse it. Line on disk seen at times, but now faint and

diffuse. Shadow of tree on part of disk. —c. O. l.

Angular width : disk, 18/3; lines, o."83.

1600 ft. Wire not certainly glimpsed : imaginary wires seem about

equally C. O. L. strong. Shadow of tree on disk, obscuring line. —

Angular width : disk, 17. '2; lines, o."78.

SECOND SERIES

Same disk, and wire for comparison, as used in the first

series of these observations.

Station.

100 ft. Wire and line on disk very distinct and clear cut. —c. O. l.

200 ft. 300 ft. station remarks hold. — v. m. s. (Observations made

going towards wire and disk.)

About the same as at 100 ft. station. Line the stronger. —

c. o. L.

300 ft. 400 ft. station remarks hold. —v. m. s.

Well denned at first glance — both wire and line on disk, line

perhaps the stronger. — c. 0. l.

400 ft. Line easier than wire and more definite. (Due to back

grounds ?) —v. M. S.

Distinct and well seen at first glance. (Line appears the

stronger). —c. o. L.

500 ft. Line more definite than wire. (Some telephone wires pass

before the disk ; these are easier and more definite than

wire.) —v. M. s.

Distinct and well seen at firstglance. No appreciable difference

from 400 ft. station. —c. o. l.

600 ft. Line easier than wire, except where the latter crosses cables.

(Cables from which disk is suspended.) — v. M. s.

Wire and line on disk seen with perfect ease and distinctly,

but fainter than at 500 ft. station — seen at first glance. —

C O. L.

700 8 ft. Line Dsk easier inaccessible. than wire.Wire — v.seen. M. s.— v. M. S.

Poor station. Trees interfere with observations. —c. O. L.

900 ft. Wire and line only fairly seen. — v. M. s.

Wire quite well seen but somewhat faint and diffuse. Line on

disk glimpsed at times but difficult. Disk very bright —
NOTES 279

illumination not the best for seeing line. Later : Line seen

quite well when the disk was swung by the wind. Faint. —

C. O. L.

1000 ft. Inaccessible. — v. m. s.

Wire glimpsed at instants. Disk obscured by trees. —c. O. L.

1100 ft. Line well glimpsed : wire doubtfully. — v. m. s.

Wire glimpsed, but faint and diffuse and not visible all the

time. Line on disk distinctly seen when disk swings around

for favorable illumination. —c. o. L.

1200 ft. Glimpse wire rather doubtful. Line and wire glimpsed some

what more certainly than at 1300 ft. station. —v. M. s.

Wire very difficult —glimpsed but faint and diffuse. Line on

disk glimpsed but faint. —c. O. L.

1300 ft. See some markings on disk as before, i.e., in second and fourth

quadrant. Perhaps glimpse wire. Line more definitely

glimpsed. —v. m. s.

Wire very difficult — glimpsed at intervals —diffuse and some

what uncertain. Line on disk also very difficult most of the

time ; very faint and diffuse. As disk swings from wind it

is distinctly glimpsed at times. — c. o. L.

1400 ft. Glimpse line and have occasional glimpses of fictitious markings

(on disk). I once imagined I glimpsed wire. There is a

dark spot in second quadrant, and glimpse line from 0° to

2900. —v. m. s.

Cannot certainly say that I glimpse wire — now of about same

strength as imaginary wires. Line on disk fairly well

glimpsed C. O. L. at times, as disk swings, but faint and diffuse. —

1500 ft. Cannot see wire. Suspect it and line on disk at times, but

uncertain. — c. o. L.

17

Canals of Mars

At the opposition of 1907, 264 canals were seen and

drawn by the writer ; a large number also by Mr. C. O.

Lampland ; and many, including some new ones, by Mr.

E. C. Slipher in South America, not yet catalogued and

mapped.
280 MARS AS THE ABODE OF LIFE

Of the 264 canals mapped, 85 were new. Owing to the

tilt of the axis and to the Martian season of the year, these

were mostly not only in the southern hemisphere but in the

more southern part of it. The position of the new canals

was as follows : —

1) 32 in the light regions.

2) 34 in the dark regions or in those of intermediate tints.

3) 12 in or through the southern 'islands.'

4) _7 at the edges of dark regions.

85 in all.

Added to those already recorded these make : —

336 101 + 3253 = 368 154 in the dark light regions. ones. (12, 3, 4

522 in all.

Of the canals seen 28 were double or about ^ of the whole

number showing. Those Ambrosia Bias Cyclops Cambyses Glaucus not hitherto II(?) so seen were the

making 56 doubles in all.

18

Position of the Axis of Mars

which determines the seasons on the planet

The position of the pole of Mars, determined by Lowell

in 1905 from a synthesis of his own observations on the

polar caps and of previous ones of the same, was : —

R.A. 3i7.°5 Dec. 54-°5
NOTES 281

This gave for the tilt of the Martian equator to the Martian

ecliptic 230 59'-

This position of the axis of Mars was adopted by the British

Nautical Almanac. The same is to be incorporated in the

American Ephemeris.

In 1907 two very full series of observations on the south

cap were obtained at Flagstaff which confirmed the several

previous series taken there, suggesting that still greater

weight should be given them in the synthesis than had

previously been assigned. The resulting inclination of the

Martian equator upon the Martian ecliptic is

230 13'.

 awu5HO

INDEX

Aeria, 209.

Air, 12.

thinning 97- of, no bar to a species, 96,

onf Mars, mountain 139, tops, 186. 98.

density at Martian surface, Notes

239-240.

Albedo,

of Mars, Venus, 78,78. 84.

of each planet, 84, Notes 249.

of Earth, Notes 247.

Amphibia, 53.

Animal life,

on peaks, 103.

dependent on temperature, 103.

Antarctic zones, 183.

Aqueducts of Carthage, 128.

Arabia, 125.

Arctic zones of Mars, 183.

Areolas of Mars, 151.

Arequipa, 153.

Aretkusa Lucus, 196.

Artificiality,

of Martian markings, 195.

of canals, 211.

Ascraeus Lucus, 157.

Asia, deserts of, 125.

Asteroids,

later found less evident than earlier,

151-

Astronomy,

gravitational, 1.

physical, 1.

Atmosphere,

of Mars, 77, Notes 238.

shown by cloud, 78.

evidence from albedo, 78.

proved by limblight, 79.

by changes in surface features, 80.

polar caps first to betray, 80.

circulation of, 130.

amount of, Notes 238.

Axial tilt,

of Earth, 71, Notes 266.

of Mars, 77, Notes 266.

Axis of Mars, Notes 280.

Beer, 81.

Blondet, Blue band,M., 48, Notes 232.

surrounding polar caps of Mars, 81-82.

Blue-grcen areas of Mars, 104-106, 133,

Bolometer, 164.

use in surface temperature deter

Boltzmann, mination,86.85.

Csenozoic time, 45.

Cambrian era, 45.

Campbell, 13S.

Canals,

discover)' of, 146.

geometric look of, 147.

as straight lines, 148.

breadth of, 149, 160.

length of, 149.

in dark regions, 152-153.

rendezvous at special points, 152.

photographed, 154.

superposed over main features, 155.

double, 159-167, 190.

direction of, 164-165.

subject to change, 167.

research, new method of, 168.

career of, 171.

cartouches of, 172-175, Notes 249.

quickening according to latitude, 175.

quickening starts at polar caps, 176.

vegetation explains behavior, 177.

advent of water down the, 181.

not cracks, 191.

not rivers, 191.

nerve and body, 210.

artificiality, 211.

number of, Notes 279-280.

183
284 INDEX

Carbon dioxide,

amount in atmosphere in paleozoic

times, 51,

a bar to the passage of heat, 51.

on Mars, 104, 107.

influence on climate. Notes 236-237.

effect of, on planets, Notes 237.

Carboniferous periods, 45, 53.

heat of, 47-48.

little light in, 47-48.

Carets of Mars, 212.

Carthage,

aqueducts of, 128.

desert character now, 129.

Cartouches, of canals, 172-175, Notes

249.

Casius, wedge of, 133.

Ceraunius, 173, 176.

Chagos Archipelago, 121.

Chalcedony,

tree trunks changed to, 127.

Challenger expedition, 42, 59, 62-63.

Chart,

bathymetric, 33.

Chemical affinity,

relation to plants, 36.

relation to stones, 37.

life a manifestation of, 37.

Clouds,

on Mars, 22, 52, 77-78, 85-86.

on Earth, 85.

Conifers, 70.

Continents of Mars, 146.

Coral reefs,

found only in warm seas, 46.

in past ages, 71.

Cowper, 17.

Cretaceous period, 64, 71.

Croll, 1 1 2-1 13, Notes 265.

Crommelin, Notes 262.

Crova, Notes 244.

Crusts of planet,

crinkling crinkling formed over of, of where result moltenmost of mass, cooling, pronounced, 13-14. 14-15.

ISknowledge of, derived from Earth,

Moon, Mars, 14, 16.

Crustacea, 60.

Cryptogams, 47. 7°-

Cycads, 70-71.

Dana, Professor, 119.

Darwin, Sir George, 26.

Day,

length of Martian, 77.

Dead stage,

of planetary career, 12.

Moon and larger satellites in, 12.

Density,

Laplacian law of, 24.

meteoric, 28.

of the Earth, 14.

of the Earth's surface rocks, 14.

Desert-belts,

girdling Earth, 124, 129.

on Mars, 131.

Deserts,

on Earth, 124.

on Mars, 134.

Devonian era,

plants found in, 46.

Djihoun, 161, 203.

Douglass, A. E., 153, 200.

Dust storms on Mars, 22, 89, Notes

256-265.

Earth, planetary career of, 13.

Eccentricity,

of Earth's orbit, Notes 266.

of Mars' orbit, Notes 266.

Elements,

existing if water be present, 39-40.

Elysium, 160.

Eocene period, 72.

Eumenides-Orcus, 149, 151, 156.

Euphrates, 213, Notes 256.

Europe,

gain of land in, 1 20.

Evolution,

planetary, 1, 3-34.

of life, 35-69.

Earth not Sun the motive force of,

52. 7*-

effect of environment upon, 54.

general principle of, 69.

steps of, 108-110.

of Earth and Mars, 73, 186.

Fal, 57.

Fauna, 45, 58.

Fossils,

evidencing planetologic eras, 44-46,

70-71.

Galitzine, 86.

Ganges, 205.

Gardiner, Stanley, ill.
INDEX 285

Generation, spontaneous, 37, 67.

Geology, a part of planetology, 13.

Glaciation,

Mare not suffering from wholesale, 89.

Gravity, on Mars, 210, Notes 23a.

Gymnosperms, 70.

Habitability of Mare, 96-97.

Habitat, of animals, 129.

Habitation,

of Mars, 215.

destined to pass away, 216.

Haeckel, 39.

Heat,

substances radiation of,varyin with, planetary 8. evolution,

9-10. *5-

of paleozoic times excessive, 48-51.

acquired by the Moon, Notes 230.

of Martian surface, Notes 231.

received 250. by Earth and Mars, Notes

retained by Earth and Mars, Notes

Heatdependent evaluated for ofhomogeneous heterogeneous condensation, forn Earth mass,body,and7-8,7-8, 8,Moon 23.24.24. sup

developed compared posing origin for by Earth planetary the and same,contraction, Mare, 24-25.27.

Notes 225-229.

Hibernation, 90, 96.

Himalaya,

snow line and timber line on, 99.

Huygens, 1, 138.

Icarii Luci, 212.

Ice-age,

Mars on the cause of, Notes 265.

Illumination, slant, 17.

heights of mountains measured by, 18.

Indo-Pacific, coral-reef region, 121.

Isoflore in Arizona, 100.

Janssen, 138.

Jurassic period, 71.

Lampland, C. O., 154-155, Notes 264,

272, 276-279.

Landscape, the result of cooling, 14.

Langley, 85, 88, Notes 241.

Laplace, 1, 24.

Lapparent, de, 48, 68, Notes 233.

Life, origin of, 35.

an inevitable phase of planetary

a evolution, manifestation 37, of66.chemical affinity,

typeshe outgrows adaptability water mode deep-sea, cosmic did37,not outcome of, of38- essential character reach mnifestation, 142. the 57-64. ofo,sea, Earth to, planetary 56, cf,53, 39.from 96, 64.55,107. 97. without, cooling, 68. 66.

chemical constituents of, 179.

Limblight,

proves existence of atmosphere on

Mars, 79.

Little Colorado, 127.

London, size of, 214.

Lower Silurian era,

wings of insects found in, 46.

Lucus Phoenicis, 161.

Madler, 81.

Maren, Acidalium, first appearance 133. of, 68.

Mareass, the 1fundamental 15, curium, 16, 31,1 58.39.factor of planetary

comparative, evolution, 9.of Earth, Moon, Mars,

16.

Maxwell, Clerk, 139.

May-flies, of Carboniferous era, 47.

Mercury, markings of, 192-193.

rotary retardation of, 207.

Merriam, Dr., 90, 95, 99.

Mesozoic time, 45, 71.

Metamorphic rocks, 12.

age of, 12.

akin to furnace slag, 13, 14.

Meteoric swarms,

gravitational heat of, 7, 8, 67.

Meteorites, 4, 34.

constitution of, 4, 6.

size of, 4.

fused worship relation oldest velocitybybitsof, of, toriction ofsolar 4,4, matter, 5,5. Notes with system,atmosphere, 5.220-225. 4-6. 4.
286 INDEX

Meteorites density occludedof,—gases 28. Continued. in, 6

members of solar system, Notes 225.

Michelson, Notes 272.

Mind,

beings revealed by, 11o.

evidence of, 143-144.

effect on planetary markings, 215.

Miocene period, 68, 72.

edible plants and plant eaters in, 68.

Molecule, organic, 35-36.

six elements of the, 37-38.

relation of atoms to, producing vital

actions, 37.

Molten stage, 12.

Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, and Jupiter

in, 12.

Moment of momentum,

of solar system, 3, Notes 219.

of Alpha Centauri, Notes 220.

Mountains,

proportional to mass of planet, 15.

none on Mars, 16, 19, 20-22.

heights measured by slant illumina

tion, 18. '

on Moon, 19, 23, 27, Notes 229-230.

Mt. Whitney,

bolometer investigations at, Notes

242.

MWler, 84.

Newton, 1.

NUokeras, 161.

Nitrogen, on Mars, 104, 107.

connection with life, 179.

North America, gain of land in, 119.

Novae,

an analogue of prehistoric cataclysms,

6.

Oases, form,irst seen, demonstration 157. of function, 157,

'95- shape of, 197.

behavior of, 197.

probable meaning of, 213-214.

Oblateness of Mars, 199.

Obliquity of Martian ecliptic, Notes 281.

Oceans, 12.

origin of, 28.

distribution of, on Earth and Mars,

28-30.

Oceans, relative size on different

planets, 30-32.

Moon more profusely endowed with,

basins of, unchanged, 32-34.

basins of, on Mars, 132.

character of bottoms of, 33, 34.

cooling of, occasioned development of

higher forms of life, 43.

of Earth, disappearing, 118.

on Earth, 141.

absent on Mars, 112, 187.

Oligocene period, 72.

Orbit,

eccentricity of Earth's, Notes 266.

eccentricity of Mars', Notes 266.

Organisms,

evolution of, 205.

Origin of Moon, 25.

Darwinian theory of, 26.

explained by heat investigation, 25-27.

Oxygen,

the on-half chiefthefactor substance in all organisms, of the Earth's 38.

onconnection surface, Mars, 104, 38.with107,life,137.179.

Paleozoic time, 45.

light 48, less 51. and heat more than now,

light and heat of, not explained by

Sun, 49-50.

Earth itself responsible for heat of,

50, 5*-

Palestine, 129.

Permean period, 54.

Petrified forests of Arizona, 125, 126.

Phison, 158, 213, Notes 256.

Phcenix Lake, 149.

Pickering, W. H., 153, 157.

Pigments, put on by the Sun, 72.

Planet,

life history of, dependent on size, 11.

internal heat of, its initial motive

power, 13.

cooling the mode by which its energy

worked, 9-10, 13, 28.

Planetology,

the connecting link between nebular

hypotheses and the Darwinian

theory, 2.

six eras of, 11-12.

geologic part of, 13-14.
INDEX 287

Plant life.

Carboniferous, 46-48, Si.

light a necessity to, 58.

not existent in deep seas, 63.

entrance of plant eaters with, 68.

Plateau,

temperature of, as compared with

peaks, 99.

Pliocene period, 72.

Polar caps,

of Mars, 80, 204.

constitution of, 81-82.

not solid carbonic acid, 81-82.

of Earth, ourselves dwellers in, 90.

diminish, 114.

snows of, 180.

canals from, 197.

water of, 204.

Notes, 268.

Partus Sigaeus, 158.

Precipitation,

of snow, Notes 260-280.

Pressure,

substances vary with, 8.

Projections,

on Martian terminator, 20.

not indicative of mountains, 21.

due to dust clouds, 22.

Propontis, 133.

Protonilus, 158.

Protoplasm,

first35-possible with formation of water,

nine-tenths first existed water, in water41.at a high tem

formed, perature,the42.moment cooling per

mitted, 67.

Pseboas Lucus, 158.

Radiant energy,

reflection of, from atmosphere and

surface of planet, 83-84.

Rainfall,

on Earth, 130.

Reptiles, advent of, 54.

Rills, of the Moon, 191.

Rotation of Mars, 75-76.

Roughness,

relative, of Earth, Moon, Mars, 16.

exception to theoretic order, 23.

Sabacus Sinus, 212.

Sahara, the, 125.

San Francisco Peaks, 00, 127.

zones of vegetation on, 93-94.

animal life on, 95-97.

life on, 103.

Sarasin, 57.

Schiaparclli, 104, 146, 147, 151, 152,

170.

Sea- bottoms,

on Earth, 118.

on Mars, 118.

Sea-level, lowering of, 121.

Seas,

the earliest home of mundane life,

sedimentary 41-42, 68. formations dependent on,

drying inland, 43-44-up121.of, 123.

Seasons,

absence of, when Earth was screened

from Sun, 51.

advent registered in changed vegeta

tion, 71-72.

long on Mars, 78.

two, of Martian growth, 183.

relative length of, determined, 113.

Seaweeds, 45.

Sedimentary formations,

fourth evolutionary stage, 12, 43.

dependent on seas, 43, 44.

Silicon, 38.

Silurian era, 45.

Sky, light of, by day, Notes 246.

Sladen expedition, 121.

Slipher, E. C, Notes 279.

Slipher, V. M., 138, Notes 256, 276.

Slope exposure, 102.

Snow,

of polar caps, 180.

precipitation of, Notes 269-270.

Snow-fall,

in Alaska, 141.

on Mars, 141.

Solar constant, Notes 242.

Solar system,

catastrophic origin of, 3.

moment of momentum of, 3, Notes 219.

meteoric constitution of, 5.

meteorites, members of, Notes 225.

Species,

supplanting of others by one, 206.

unification of, 207.

Spectroscope, the, 137.

Spectrum, energy of, Notes 242.
288 INDEX

Stefan, 86.

Struggle for existence, 304-10$.

Summer, Struvc, Hermann, 200.

investigation the life season,on,90,by95,Dr.96. Mcrriam,

O0-91. 95-

bearing 96. upon the habitability of Mars,

Sun,

causes not paleozoic, theseasons, source 49, Notes of50.Earth's 232-235. early heat,

S°- first becomes let indominant, by Earth's70. cooling, 70.

Sun stage, the, 12.

Surface permanent changesfeatures in, in80.place, of Mars77.visible, 73.

smoother than Earth's, 186-187.

Surface heat,

of Moon, Mars, 87,9. 88.

their air compatible with great, 87.

Surface of equilibrium, 201.

Teisserenc de Bort, Notes 247.

Telluric lines in spectrum, 137.

Temperature,

of Mars, 89.

due to the Sun, 83.

new determination of, 83-86.

in summer and winter, 87.

mean, Notes 240-255.

within which life can exist, 39, 90.

Terraqueous stage, 12.

Earth in, 12, 13.

Terrestrial stage, 12; Mars in, 12.

Tertiary era, 71.

Thirst, planetary mode of death, 207.

Tibetan table-lands,

effect on climate, 99.

Tidal effects, Notes 270.

Tokio, size of, 214.

Trees, deciduous,

first appearance of, 71.

Triassic period,

(new red sandstone), 70.

Trilobites, 45-

Trivium Charontis, 149.

Tropic of Cancer, 125.

Tropic of Capricorn, 125.

Twilight,

short on Mars, 78.

Upper Silurian era,

insects found in, 46.

Variation, each the motive planet spontaneous, principle sets a different of life,stage 53. for,

64-65.

Vegetal life,

effect of plateaux upon, 99, 102.

blue-green and ochre color suggest

it, 106.

on peaks, 103.

Vegetal quickening, 177.

Vegetation,

luxuriance of, in paleozoic times, 51.

explains behavior of canals, 177.

sprouting time, on Earth, 180.

speed of, 181.

spread of, 181.

sprouting time on Mars, 182.

Venus, 178.

markings on, 192-193.

rotary retardation of, 207.

visibility of fine lines, Notes 269-279.

Vernal quickening, 178.

Very, Professor, 87, 88, Notes 242, 243.

Vogel, 138.

Volcanic phenomena,

proportional to mass of planet, 16.

occur where crust is most permeable,

16.

Water,

in proportion to mass of planet, 31.

essential to life, 39.

boiling points of, on Earth and Mars,

specific relative 30, Notes amounts heat 231-232. of, 51. on Earth and Mars,

141.

loss the of polar answer of supply, caps,to 204. the 208.riddle, 198-203.

Water-vapor,

effect in the onairspectrum, of Mars, Notes 103, 135, 248.139.

Year, length of Martian, 78.

Zones, area of, 163.
MARS AND ITS CANALS

By PERCIVAL LOWELL

Director of the Observatory at Flagstaff, Arizona; Non- Resident Professor of Astronomy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ; Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; Meinbre de la Society Astronomique dc France; Member of the Astronomical and Astro-Physical Society of America; Mitglicd der Astronomische Gesellschaft; Membre de la hociete Beige d' Astronomic; Honorary Member of the Sociedad Astronomica de Mexico; Janssen Medalist of the Societe Astronomique de France, 1904, for Researches on Mars; etc., etc.

Cloth, 8vo, illustrated, $2.50 net; by mail, $2.75

" The question whether Mars is inhabited has not been taken up very seriously by the great body of astronomers. . . . The Latest, and we are inclined to think the fullest and best, contribution to its solution is this remarkable volume, written in a very clear style, free from scientific technicalities, and illustrated by maps and diagrams, so that the non-expert layman can understand it. . . . Mr. Lowell's investigations, coupled with those of other earlier investigators, indicate that the inhabitants of Mars are carrying on a system of irrigation for agricultural purposes on an immeasurably larger scale than has ever been dreamed of on our planet, that they possess a high degree of agricultural and mechanical intelligence, and a degree of moral development so far in advance of any we have yet reached that in all probability war is among them wholly unknown." — Outlook.

" The book makes fascinating reading, and is intended for the average man of intelligence and scientific curiosity. It represents mature reflection, patient investiga tion and observation, and eleven years' additional work and verification. ... It is the work of a scientist who has found inspiration and joy in his work ; it is full of enthusiasm, but the enthusiasm is not allowed to influence unduly a single conclusion. . . . The book is full of quotable sayings and delightful things. . . . We have here science, reality, that is infinitely stranger and more thrilling than the most imaginative fiction." — Chicago Evening Post.

" Mr. Lowell's book embodies such a wealth of observation and reasoning that it is not possible to do it justice within the space of the present review. How widely soever

one may dissent from his conclusions, one must concede that among all the observers of the planet, he easily takes first place, both with respect to the favorable conditions under which he has worked, the energy and enthusiasm which he has displayed, and the care he has taken to avoid every source of error. The most adverse critic cannot but admire the tireless industry with which the planet has been scanned night after night, every noteworthy appearance regarded, and the mass of facts thus acquired moulded into a consistent whole. . , . There is no heavenly body, except the sun, in which so many complex and variable phenomena have been found as Mr. Lowell has found in Mars, and no work upon the physical constitution of a heavenly body has surpassed his in the quantity and ingenuity of its reasoning." — N. Y. Evening Post.

" It seems impossible that Mr. Lowell can raise another girder more grandly impressive and expressive of the whole fabric, or take another step in his scientific syllogism that will hold us any tighter in his logic. He has practically reached already his ' Q. E. D." The thing is done, apparently, except for filling in the detail. But with his racy, epigrammatic brilliancy of style, his delicate, quiet humor, his daring scientific imagination — all held in check by instinctive modesty of good breeding, gayly throwing to the winds all professional airs and mere rhetorical bounce —his course will be no doubt as charming to the end as it has been steadily illuminating

even for the illuminati." —Boston Transcript.

PUBLISHED BY

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

64-66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YOBK
A COMPENDIUM OF SPHERICAL ASTRONOMY

With its applications to the delermination and reduction of positions of the fixed stars

By SIMON NEWCOMB

Cloth 8vo $3.00 net

CONTENTS

PART L PRELIMINARY SUBJECTS

Chapter I. Introductory. Notes and References. Chapter II. Differences, Interpolation, and Development. Notes and References. Chapter III. The Method of Least Squares. Section I. Mean Values of Quantities. II. Determination of Probable Errors. III. Equations of Condi tion. Notes and References.

PART H. THE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OP SPHERICAL

ASTRONOMY

Chapter IV. Spherical Coordinates. Section I. General Theory. II. Prob lems and Applications of the Theory of Spherical Coordinates. Chapter V. The Measure of Time and Related Problems. Section I. Solar and Sidereal Time. II. The General Measure of Time. III. Problems Involving Time. Chapter VI. Parallax and Related Subjects. Section I. Figure and Dimensions of the Earth. II. Parallax and Semi-diameter. Chapter VII. Aberration. Chapter VIII. Astronomical Refraction. Section I. The Atmosphere as a

Refracting Medium. II. Elementary Exposition of Atmospheric Refraction. III. General Investigation of Astronomical Refraction. Notes and Refer ences to Refraction. Chapter IX. Precession and Nutation. Section I. Laws of the Precessional Motion. II. Relative Positions of the Equator and Equinox at Widely Sepa rated Epochs. III. Nutation. Notes and References to Precession and Nutation.

PART DJ. REDUCTION AND DETERMINATION OF POSITIONS OF THE

FIXED STARS

Chapter X. Reduction of Mean Places of the Fixed Stars from one Epoch TO Another. Section I. The Proper Motions of the Stars. II. Trig onometric Reduction for Precession. III. Development of the Coordinates in

the Powers of the Time. NOTES aND References. Chapter XI. Reduction to Apparent Place. Section I. Reduction to Terms of the First Order. II. Rigorous Reduction for Close Polar Stars. III. Prac tical Methods of Reduction. IV. Construction of Tables of the Apparent Places

of Fundamental Stars. NOTES AND REFERENCES. Chapter XII. Method of Determining the Positions of Stars by Merid ian Observations. Section I. Method of Determining Right Ascensions. II. The Determination of Declinations. Chapter XIII. Methods of Deriving the Positions and Proper Motions of the Stars from Published Results of Observations. Section I. Historical Review. II. Reduction of Catalogue Positions of Stars to a Homo geneous System. III. Methods of Combining Star Catalogues.

NOTES AND REFERENCES

List of Independent Star Catalogues. Catalogues made at Northern Observatories. Catalogues made at Tropical and Southern Observatories.

APPENDIX

Explanation of the Tables of the Appendix. — I. Constants and Formulae in Frequent Use. II. Tables Relating to Time and Arguments for Star Reduc tions. III. Centennial Rates of the Precessional Motions. IV. Tables and Formulae for the Trigonometric Reduction of Mean Places of Stars. V. Reduc tion of the Struve-Peters Precessions to the Adopted Values. VI. Conversion of Longitude and Latitude into R. A. and Dec. VII. Refractions. VIII. Co efficients of Solar and Lunar Nutation. IX. Three-place Logarithms and Trigonometrical Functions.

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY, 64-66 Fifth Avenue, New York










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