Morning journal and courier., 1886-07-21

of the solar heat. To calculate the exact
 amount of heat absorbed by a given thick
 ness of air is very difficult, if not impossi-
 ble, problem; but it seems likely tn at, taking everything into account, the inhabitants of | Mars will receive more heat from the sun | than we do. This would have the effect of
 making the evaporation very large, and if SO 1 the Martial atmosphere would be mostly 1 composed of water vapor
 1 According to Professor Langley, the true l color of the sun is blue, and it's yellowness 1 is due to the dirt always present in the air. 1 To the inhabitants of Mars it would most 1 probably appear nearly white, unless indeed | they also have volcanoes to fill the air with l lava dust.
 l Let us now sum up the facts we have 1 stated and determine as far as we can what l sort of man the inhabitant of Mars must be. l In the first place the force of gravitation at the surface is only just over one third of 1 it's equivalent on the earth; pound would therefore weigh about six ounces in Mars. If, therefore, we assume that the men are of l such size that their weight and activity are the same as ours, they would be about four teen feet high on the average. This would make their strength very great for not only would it be actually superior to ours, but, as every weight is 80 much smaller, it would be apparently proportionally increased. We should therefore expect to find that the Mar tlalltes have executed large engineering works; perhaps also their telescopes are much superior to ours and we have been objects of interest for their observers. With regard to telescopes 1t may be interesting to examine
 what is the effect of the highest magnifying
 power we can use. At his nearest approach
 the distance from us to Mars is about thirty
 seven million miles; and assuming that the
 highest power that can be used with advan-
 tage is twelve hundred, we approach with 1
 our telescopes to distance of thirty thou i sand miles, 80 that houses or towns, or in | deed any artificial works, would be hopeless | ly invisible. With regard to the supply of | heat and light we have seen that the Martial | ite is not worse off than we are. To him the 1 sun would appear white or perhaps blue | disk, about two-thirds of the diameter that | it appears to us. The Martial day differs |
 but slightly frem ours; his year, however, is l much longer, being about six hundred and | eightyseven of our days, which is about six | hundred and fifty Martial days The incli- ! nation of his axis to the plane of the orbit l is such that his seasons would be very simi- ! lar to ours. It is difficult to reconcile the l Idea of an extensive vegetation with his pc | culiar red color; it is just possible, however, 1 that some ot the green patches generally | supposed to be seas may in reality be large 5 forests.
 The most valid objection to the habitabli- | ty of Mars lies in the fact of the extremely | low atmospheric pressure, which, we have | seen, would probably average about five ! inches of mercury. The lowest pressure | d time, is about seven inches, which was reached by Coxwell and Glaisher in their fla nous balloon ascent. The aeronauts, how | ever, narrowly escaped perishing, not only on account of the low pressure, but also be- cause of the extreme cold.
 It seems impossible that a man constitu- ted exactly as we are could live for any l length of time breathing air only one-sixth of the density of ours. But it is rather go- ing out of our way to assume that the Mar tialites would be exactly the same we are in every way; the chances a million to ! cue against 1t; and, on the other hand, a very slight modification of the lung arrangement wonld suffice to make life perfectly possible under such conditions.
 The nights on Mars would be very dark. for he has no satellite like our moon. He has, it is true, two moons, but they are so small that their Illuminating power is nil, being respectively only sixty and forty miles in diameter. The smallest of these presents 1 the curious phenomenon that it revolves round Mars faster than the planet turns on l his own axis, and therefore would appear to rise in the west and set in the east
 Our earth, seen from Mars when at his nearest, would appear about the same size as Jupiter does to us-that is to say would subtend angle of about forty seconds. At l his farthest distance this would be reduced | to fourteen.
 We thus see that there is ample reason for assuming that this, the most interesting of 1 all the planets, is the abode of creatures not l essentially different from ourselves. Being considerably older than are, the Martial ties probably much further advanced in the arts and sciences; and perhaps there may be some truth in the story of the Italian as tronomer who says he has lately detected lights on the planet moving about in such way as seems to indicate deliberate inten- tion to open communication with the earth. What the language of the lights is we have not been informed; let us hope it is some thing more practical than the proposal of the Russian savant to communicate with the moon by cutting huge figure of the forty seventh proposition of Euclid on the plains of Siberia, which he said any fool would un- derstand.