Weekly journal-miner., 1910-02-23
PROF. LOWELL HAS INSIDE MARS
 TRACK
fFrom satnrday.s paiIyl

lively editorial filled with keen humor, has the following comment on the | activity of Prof. Lowell of the Flag staff observatory, as compared with | other scientists in astonomy:
 "It is a fact at which We point | with Western pride, that Prof. Low ell, at Flagstaff, Ariz- should have so much more inside information about | Mars than any other observer at home or abroad. Big telescopes are many; unelouded points from which to ob- serve the heavenly bodies are not few; but if you want the news from Mars you must wire Prof. Lowell. The rest of the worlds astronomers appear to be blind to the most inter esting data. Apparently, at Oxford and Cambridge, at Jena and Heldel- berg and Zurich, at Harvard, Yale and Princeton, and at the scientific stations in the Andes and the Hinb- alayas nothing worth while is found on Mars at all The most astonishing things happen there when only Low ell is looking. The rest of the worlds star-gazers must be using their clear nights for sleep. They are not in it with the wide-awake Arizonan.
 "It was iii June, 1907, that Prof. Lowell described certain vegetation at the base of the reeeding snow cap of the Martian South Pole. Nobody else saw it, and some harsh astro- nomical spirits seemed doubtful that the vegetation would be green enough against the snow bank to show up at 35.OOO,OOO of miles. Still, that was a mere matter of detail, and eastern prejudice was at the bottom of 1t. Along in March, 1908, Prof. Lowell hit up his spyglass again and found Mars shrouded with water vapor. No one else could discover any, even through bigger telescopes, and one iaundiced scientist, in his disappOint- ment, said that with so small a glass as Lowell s nothing of the kind could be seen if it were there. Then there was that conceded temperature of Mars of twenty below zero to consider. How about showers and full canals, forsoOth3 But there was no phasing Lowell. He had Mars down pat, and along in May he saw rifts in the South Polar cap big enough for a musk OK to fall into. Everybody in the astronomical line then elapped a telescope to his eye, but there wasn't a sled track, let alone a rift, visible. Lowell had a scoop, at least so they said but it was a case of sheer sectional ieal- ousy.
 "On September 24, 1909, news came from Lowell that the Antarctic canals were disappearing. We were all proud to take the Arizona dis eoverer's word for it. Along in No vember of the same year the professor sent out Martian weather bulletin announcing the first Antarctic snow storm. There has been a few light flurries the day before and the in habitants were apparently getting in their coal in anticipation of a hard winter. The day of the announce ment the blizzard struck, and the in ference was that the roads were all drifted. Flagstaff reported nothing about the Martians getting out to the postoffiee. But the envy of the effete east could not have been more ex- pressive if it had.
 "Next we knew a dust storm had swept Mars, and when it blew away there were a lot more canals in sight and open for the spring trade. Not a word from the other astronomers, They had been caught mapping again and were ashamed of themselves. And yesterday they got another solar plexus blow While they were OuI after supper watching the comet, the vigilant inside man at Flagstaff, with his eye on Mars, say one of his new canals in the very act of irrigating crops There was a sudden strip ot produce 1000 miles long and twenty miles wide right in sight. It wal impossible to say whether the yielC was of sugar beets or lettuce, but, ot course, Prof. Lowell can't be expect ed to act as if he were the Secre tary of Agriculture. He is only ; plain astronomer with a limited knOwl edge of vegetables.
 "The east and Europe may stan, assured that the west is solid fo Lowell and will take no back tall from people who wouldn't wake u
 if the whole planet showed up wit
 an irrigated crop of red pumpkins.
 WASHINGTON, D. C., Feb. IS. -
 Colonel John W. Pullman, for man,