Arizona weekly citizen., 1889-05-11
ON THE PLANET MARS.
THE CANALS A LONG KNOWN MS
 TERRY OF THE HEAVENS.

Mars Favorably Situated for Astroaoms-
 cal Observation-Some Rather Cnriouz
 Facts - What Life on Our Neighbos
 Planet Is Supposed To Be Like
 M Berthelot, one of the academicians, Is evidently light hearted savant, for he at once asked Nj de Lesseps, who was
 present at the meeting. If he had by chance a brother projector in Mars"
 whereat all the learned astronomers smiled solemnly This is, surely. the
 first time that joke has been imported
 from a spot 1000. 900 miles of. which Is about the distance of the planet Mars
 from our earth The canals perceived by
 M Perrotin upon the surface of our next outside neighbor in the solar system, however, are a long known mystery of the heavens. and one that Is probably as far as ever from being solved by the face
 tious wizard
 Mars happens to be better situated for observation by astronomers than any other body in the sky except the moon
 He is more than hundred times farther of than the moon at his very closest ap-
 proach. and measures only 4.200 miles
 through at his equator, but, unlike the
 moon. he exhibits in turn every portion of his surface, rotating in day which IS about half an hour longer than our own Thus the entire face of the planet Mars
 has been pretty accurately mapped, and
 presents a diversified aspect of large patches of alternating lighter and darker
 markings which may naturally suggest the divisions of land and water. At the poles of Mars are extensive white regions, vuhioh ahnru mn in tho fial6 of the telescope with striking brilliancy and clearuess of definition: and since these
 undergo periodic changes. occasionally almost vanishing and then shining forth again at just the seasons when it would be winter with the Martians, astronomers had been led to call them lice caps," and to believe that we actually behold the Arctic and Antarctic polar seas of the planet in the form of these little white saucers stuck on each end of the ''star of war"
 AS for the canals with which NJ Per- rotip poked scientific fun at NJ de Lesseps,
 they are certainly very curious objects. From sea tc sea, or what looks like 1t,
 run these straight passages. wearing an appearance, no doubt. of some immense artificial work-some Panama or Suez canal on a colossal scale. They do not
 alter or extend-there they always arel- ome of them completed, others appar- ently imperfect, as if the Martian cham Der of deputies had refused to sanction
 lottery loan for the fulfllment of the original design But when NM. Perrotin
 md Faye begin to talk of engineers"
 and men in Mars" 1t is necessary to re-
 member that to be seen at all. even as
 hair line, these canals in Mars would have
 70 be at least 500 times as broad as the
 Thames-say thirty or forty miles across and as their length is to be reckoned in hundreds of miles, the navvies in Mars, if lucy exist, must certainly be wonderful oeingsl
 Astronomers, admirable on so many points. are never so stupid and unimagin-
 ative as when meditating on the proba- Utilities of life beyond this earth. that old
 ard fascinating topic of more worlds than one" They take their terrestrial notions and experiences much too blindly into space; they ask If there be an atmos- | phere in the moon, or water in Mars; and | if any doubts exist about these elements they solemnly conclude that these and | other lovely and eligible celestial abodes
 Ire tenantiess. As if life were not con- ceivable without lungs and iyeri As if
 
 | the glorious promotions of inter-stellar space the dentist, the anti bilious pill and | bronchitis
 1t is true that for beings constructed as we are at present Mars would be a novel and rather a surprising kind of abode. Supposing we found dense air enough to breathe there. and water sufh cient for tea and washing-which are both dubious points-the diminished yravitation of the little planet is so great that it would induce a physical and
 mental levity fatal to dullness and for
 bidding sense of fatigue. What Is a hundred weight here would there weigh only fifty-s pounds. and we could all go Up stairs five steps at a time, or jump twice our own height with ease and grace. Then it would assuredly be very nice, i! we were living in the right latitude on Mars. to have a quick moon and a slow
 moon. always careering round like splen- did Chinese lanterns. saving gas bills and encouraging long walks of lovers and Martial poetry. A fall from a horse would seldom or never prove at all seri- ous in the Martial hunting fields; the rider would rebound from the soft soil like an India rubber cushion Aerial navigation has quite possibly been solved long ago by the fortunate people of the
 red planet. the conditions being so ex-
 tremely favorable. and who knows, in deed, whether the so called ''canals" are
 not vast tobogganing slides. where the
 entire population enjoys the unwonted
 sense of swift descent, and some little spice of perlS But we may be sure of
 this, that If there be sentient creatures
 on the silver and pearl surfaces of Mars.
 they are of very different type from our
 terrestrial frames. for life Is always the
 equation of its surrounding conditions.
 and we denizens of the earth have lungs
 and larynx simply because we live at
 the bottom of sn aerial sea. just as fish
 possess gills because they breathe the
 v,tar nndan TalarraDb