The daily morning journal and courier., 1901-02-16
MORE ABOUT MARS.
Interesting Revelations of the Recent
 Signals.

Interesting Revelations of the Recent | Signals.
 1 Astronomers almost never see clouds
 on the sunlit portions of the planet If ! they exist as thin cirrus clouds we
 should perhaps be unable to see them.
 Heavy cloudsr if they covered large
 enough area of the planet, would be visible. They would have to cover per-
 haps million square miles before they i could be recognized with certainty. But on this earth they cover far more
 area than that, and therefore, as we do
 not see them on Mars at-all we con- clude that the planet is extremely dry. As matter of fact, it has no oceans
 and no surfaces that are positively identified as permanent water surfaces
 Some observers even doubt that the
 planet is warm enough to permit the
 existence of water. The only two indi-
 cations of water, however, are in the
 polar caps of snow and the clouds, such
 as this one, which become visible to us as the sun sets on the region above
 which they float. These clouds stand
 above such regions like the peaks of
 high mountains, and receive the last
 rays of the setting sun, when all be-
 heath is dark They therefore appear
 to us as bright spots against dark
 background, or as bright points extend- ing from the sunlit portion of the planet out into the region of night.
 The first observation of phenome- non of this kind was made at the Lick n in, A fays col n
 in 1892 at a number of observatories. Over three hundred and fifty were ob served and studied at this observatory in 1894, and many were seen in 1896. The result of the study of several hum dred of them is given in volume I of the Annals of the Lowell Observato- ry'' By the research 1t became evil dent that many of them formed at sum- set. Tn character they were probably like our dense cumulous clouds. Their average elevation was much greater than our cumulous clouds, being seve- ral miles on an average, and one was seen at least as high as fifteen miles above the surface, that of November 25, 1894. In that case the cloud was seen near the sunrise terminator, as it is Calleu, lIldl IS, tIlc LII Sotlh line on the planet at which the sun was rising. If we were searching for sig nals, the cloud of November 25, 1894 would be a very much more striking case than anything seen before or since. On the night of November 25, this cloud was seen as a white spot against the dark background of the unillumined surface beneath. It was hundred miles across and at least fifteen miles above the surface. It remained in that point over half an hour, then suddenly disa nneared On the following night it was only eight miles high. Instead of constantly as bright spot it appeared and disappeared The first lasted sixteen minutes; af- ter four minutes it disappeared; it came again for only a moment and after six minutes more it again appeared for two and one-half minutes. Then followed an absence of three minutes, presence one minute, absence eight minutes and a final brief appearance forty-six min- utes after the first sight of it.
 If some genius can prove that these were a series of signals from Mars 1t would be a matter of the greatest inn l portance My own belief is that it was