  Mars and Its Canals “The book makes fascinating reading and is intended for the average man of intelligence and scientific curiosity. It represents mature reflection, patient investigation 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.”—Chicago 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 instructive 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. “Whether or not we choose to follow the author of this book to his ultimate inferences, he at least opens up a field of fascinating conjecture. The work is written in a style as popular as the precise enumeration of the ascertained facts permits, and if the narrative is not in all its details as entrancing as a novel, it nevertheless transports us into a region of superlatively romantic interest.”—New York Tribune. “No doubt the highest living authority on Mars and things Martian is Prof. Percival Lowell, director of the observatory at Flagstaff, Arizona, an astronomical investigator and writer known over the entire world. Professor Lowell’s book, ‘Mars and Its Canals,’ is the final word, up to the present, on the planet and what we know of it.”—Review of Reviews. PUBLISHED BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 64-66 Fifth Avenue, New York PERCIVAL LOWELL’S Mars as the Abode of Life The book is based on a course of lectures delivered at the Lowell Institute in 1906, supplemented by the results of later observations. It is, in the large, the presentation of the results of the author’s research into the genesis and development of what we call a world; not the mere aggregating of matter, but the process by which that matter comes to be individual as we find it. He bridges with the new science of planetology the evolutionary gap between the nebular hypothesis and the Darwinian theory. “It is not only as an astronomer but as a writer that Professor Lowell charms the reader in this work. The beguilement of the theme is well matched by the grace and literary finish of the style in which it is presented. The subject is one to beget enthusiasm in its advocates, and the author certainly is not devoid of it. The warmth and earnestness of the true lover of his theme shine through the entire work so that in its whole style and illustrations it is a charming production.”—St. Louis Globe Democrat. “Mr. Lowell approaches the subject by outlining the now generally accepted theory of the formation of planets and the solar system. He describes the stages in the life history of a planet three of which are illustrated in the present state of the earth, Mars, and the moon. He tells what conditions we would expect to find on a planet in what we may call the Martian age, and proceeds to show how the facts revealed by observation square with the theories. The book is fascinatingly readable.”—The Outlook. “So attractive are the style and the illustrations that the work will doubtless draw the attention of many new readers to its fascinating subject. Professor Lowell has fairly preËmpted that portion of the field of astronomy which interests the widest readers, for there is no doubt that speculation regarding the possibility of life on other planets than our own has a peculiar attraction for the average human mind.... For the convenience of the non-technical reader, the body of the book has been made as simple and understandable as possible.”—Philadelphia Press. PUBLISHED BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 64-66 Fifth Avenue, New York Footnotes: Transcriber’s Notes: The illustrations have been moved so that they do not break up paragraphs and so that they are next to the text they illustrate. Typographical errors have been silently corrected. The numerical reference to the NOTES, i. e. [1] have been changed to "(see NOTE x)" in order to avoid confusion with the true footnotes. |
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