In knowledge, that man only is to be condemned and despised who is not in a state of transition.

Faraday.

Having shown to the satisfaction of any reasonable mind that the delicate lines, known as canals, do exist, it will be interesting to examine some of the theories which have been advanced to explain these markings, as well as some of the absurd deductions drawn from their existence. The late Dr. J. Joly, Professor of Geology in the University of Dublin, in a paper on the Origin of the Canals of Mars ("Trans." Royal Soc., Dublin) came to the conclusion that meteoric bodies, revolving on or near the surface of Mars, produced these lines. In brief, he supposed that Mars at various times in the early stages of his history, when his rotation period was much shorter, attracted small bodies, which, after whirling about the planet, finally came down on the crust and caused these lines. He conceived of satellites twice the diameter of Phobos, or say, seventy-two miles in diameter, flying about Mars at a distance of sixty-three miles, which would at this distance, by its attractive force, exert a stress on the supposed thin crust of Mars of from fifteen to thirty tons per square foot, and thus rend the surface of the planet in a zone two hundred and twenty miles wide, thus forming two parallel ridges which might be visible to us as double canals. This preposterous idea takes no account of the greater attractive force of the Earth, and that it too should have had precisely the same experience, more often repeated. No trace of such behaviors, however, has ever been detected. The Moon, too, should have caught some of these heavy bodies, but while conspicuous cracks are seen on her surface, and delicate ridges are seen radiating from the larger volcanoes, not a trace of these great meteoric furrows has ever been observed. It takes no account of the chances?—?one in a million?—?that these cavorting meteors should meet at common centres, and if they did, the impossibility that they should stop abruptly and then start off in opposite directions. It takes no account of many of the lines following the arc of a great circle, or what finally became of three or four hundred of these meteors to tally with the number of the canals, unless it is supposed that some of them went whirling around the planet three or four times, changing their courses instantly and repeatedly. Indeed, the advancement of such absurd ideas shows the desperate despair of a man who tries to escape the admission that the lines in question may be artificial?—?and hence the result of intelligence working to a definite end?—?by a conception as crazy as one might possibly get in a disordered dream. To heighten the absurdity of this theory, if that were possible, Mr. J.L.E. Dryer, who signs a notice of this paper, while calling attention to the fact that this hypothesis takes no account of the correlation of changes in the canals with seasonal changes on the planet, otherwise soberly says: "It must be conceded that there is nothing in the new hypothesis contrary to observed facts."

Mr. J. Orr, in the pages of the "British Astronomical Journal," assuming that Schiaparelli believed that the canals were excavated (despite the fact that Schiaparelli called them canali, or channels), and compared them to the English Channel and the Channel of Mozambique?—?for at the outset he had no doubt of their being natural configurations?—?proceeds to show the impossibility of an idea that was never entertained. His attempt is as childish and ridiculous as the theory he conjures up. Mr. Orr, taking it for granted that the only explanation offered for these lines is that they are excavated, concludes that a Martian canal, like Tartarus, "should be seventy feet in depth (one might ask, why not five hundred or five thousand?) and that the canals of Mars would contain 1,634,000 of our Suez Canals, and would require an army of two hundred million men, working for one thousand of our years, for their construction," and similar idiocies regarding the population of Mars, which he concludes "must be 409,000,000, thus showing that all the adult males, and a large number of women, must have been engaged in the great work." In connection with this absurd travesty, let us pause for a moment to consider the extraordinary character of the president of this society before which this paper was read. A man who is the senior assistant of the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, instead of rebuking this balderdash as entirely beside the question, stated as the result of an experiment with a lot of charity-school children, that the canals are merely illusions of the brain, and this in the face of the testimony of a number of astronomers, many of whom are highly distinguished, that the markings do exist. This man seriously commented on the paper by saying: "He hoped that Mr. Orr's statistical, but nevertheless amusing and instructive, paper might prove one more nail in the coffin of a very absurd idea which had certainly got most undue currency, namely, that the canals of Mars could possibly be the work of human agents." Equally astounding, too, is it that this nonsense the "Astronomical Journal of the Pacific" republishes without a word of comment. But what could we expect of the mentality of the senior assistant of the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, who, with the great vault of heaven crowded with enigmas awaiting an answer, should waste a particle of gray matter in trying to ascertain precisely where Joshua stood when he commanded the Sun to stand still so that he could have a little more time for his bloody work. Even the day of the month is ascertained; he finds that the date of this murderous affair was about July 22, and that the Sun must have risen exactly at 5 A. M. and set at 7 P. M. The Moon, he concludes, must have been about its third quarter and was within half an hour of setting. He could not fix the year, however! Fancy all this detail without a word of exegetical criticism, or comment on the precise words of Joshua. "And he said in the sight of Israel, Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon. And the Sun stood still, and the Moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies." Not even a pious query as to why the Lord did not shower down a few more meteorites, rather than disarrange the whole solar system. Such an attitude of the mind renders one incapable of appreciating anything in astronomic research beyond that which can be measured and photographed. The above is a fair illustration of the intolerable attitude of many of those who deny the existence of the canals, or, if admitting them as existent, resort to every expedient to disprove their artificial character.

Among the interesting suggestions as to the cause of the lines on Mars is that proposed by Professor W.H. Pickering, who, while admitting that they represent bands of vegetation, believes that they have their counterpart on the Moon, and that both are produced by volcanic forces, the cracking of the surface being the result of internal strain and stress. The fissures thus produced permit the escape of water vapor and carbon dioxide, and thus the natural irrigation of these cracks is effected and growth of vegetation follows. This opinion should have great weight, as Professor Pickering has made a profound study of lunar details, and is one of the foremost authorities on the subject. He has also drawn many of the surface features of Mars, and was at one time connected with the Lowell Observatory. He it was who suggested irrigation to account for the great apparent width of the Martian lines. In the "Annals of the Harvard College Observatory," Vol. LIII, No. 14, Professor Pickering presents a study of a crater on the Moon's surface, known as Eratosthenes, accompanied by drawings and photographs of an area within the crater revealing a few irregular cracks which he thinks correspond to the well-known canals of Mars; indeed, he calls these lines canals though he believes them to be cracks. A few spots, probably craterlets, he compares to the oases of Lowell. That there is no atmosphere on the Moon is admitted by all. Professor Pickering's keen eye has, however, detected a change in the appearance of these cracks which he attributes to vegetation, animated in its growth by water vapor and carbonic acid gas, as before remarked. In this supposition he may be right, though it seems difficult to believe that so deliquescent an organism as a plant could withstand a variation of temperature from two to three hundred degrees below zero, to one above that of boiling water. One might naturally ask why the greater cracks so conspicuous on the Moon's surface, typical examples of which are found in the Mare Serenitis, Mare Triangulatis, and surroundings, do not emit aqueous vapor and carbon dioxide, and thus show similar features of widening and change of shade. Admitting the correctness of Pickering's views, it seems impossible to see any resemblance between this diminutive agglomeration of lines within a lunar crater, and the great geodetic lines sweeping for hundreds of miles across the face of Mars.

In the lunar crater, known as Flammarion's Circle, a most typical branching crack is seen. An examination of these lunar cracks, of which I made drawings through the great telescope at the Lowell Observatory, showed them to be cracks of the most unmistakable character, paralleled on the Earth's surface, by sunbaked fissures. If volcanic forces have caused these cracks in the Moon the same kind of energy should have produced the same general results in Mars, and circular craters should equally be in evidence, for many of the lunar craters are sufficiently large to be detected were they on Mars. They would certainly be indicated on the terminator, and yet not a trace of such markings has been found. It is rather extraordinary, too, that such earthquake fissures on any great scale should not have been filled with trap, silicate, or other injected material. Indeed it is strange that such a triangulating arrangement of cracks has not been found on the Earth's surface.

In order to pronounce the lines on Mars as simply cracks one should study the various kinds of cracks in similar surfaces on the Earth. In such a study he would be amazed at the similarity of cracks. When there is a grain in the substance, as in wood, the cracks follow the grain, though even in this material they are discontinuous. In amorphous material they have essentially the same character; whether in the almost microscopic crackle of old Satsuma pottery, or huge cracks in sun-dried mud, the areas enclosed are generally polygonal. If the material be of impalpable fineness the edges of the cracks are smooth and clean-cut, as in Plate III, from a Chinese bowl; whereas if the material is coarse and pebbly the edges of the cracks are rough and irregular, as in Plate IV, from the muddy shores of a lake. Cracks arising from contraction never converge to a common centre, and when not connected with another crack they taper to a point. They begin at indefinite places and end in an equally indefinite manner. That there should be a common resemblance in cracks due to contraction is evident as they arise from a shrinking of the surface. The most ancient deposits, millions of ages ago, reveal mud cracks differing in no respect from those found to-day. We subjoin a few forms of cracks from various surfaces, to show their essential resemblance. It will be seen that the cracks in the Moon are identical in character to those found on the Mesa at Flagstaff. They start from some indefinite point, are irregular in outline and end as indefinitely. A poor asphalt pavement offers one of the best opportunities for the study of the formation of various kinds of cracks and fissures. On the edge of a sloping sidewalk one may see the cracks due to a sliding, or lateral displacement of the surface; the effects of subsidence show a number of cracks around the area of depression; the growth of a tree crowding the asphalt shows the effect of lateral thrust, and an enlargement of a root below, or the effects of frost show cracks due to elevation. All these various cracks reveal the same features: they are discontinuous, they begin and end without definition. Schiaparelli says in regard to the canali of Mars: "None of them have yet been seen cut off in the middle of the continent, remaining without beginning or without end." These lines on the surface of Mars, as a writer in "Nature" says, are almost without exception geodetically straight, supernaturally so, and this in spite of their leading in every possible direction. It is inconceivable that cracks should be laid out with such geodetic precision. We have seen that cracks have no definite beginning or termination; we have seen that the lines of Mars begin and end at definite places. Cracks are irregular, vary in width and differ entirely from the straight lines depicted by Schiaparelli, Lowell, and others. But if we admit them to be natural cracks in the crust we are compelled to admit that the forces implicated in such cracks must have been active many millions of years ago, as Mars, being a much older planet than the Earth, must have long since ceased to show those activities which the Earth, even to-day, exhibits in such phenomena as earthquakes, subsidences, elevations, and the like. Now cracks made at that early time in the history of the planet must have long since become filled with detritus and obliterated in other ways, and no evidence would show, even on close inspection, of their former existence, much less at a distance of 50,000,000 of miles, more or less.

In Plate V, page 112, are given six figures representing various cracks and fissures. No. 1 represents the cracks in the glaze of Japanese pottery, magnified. No. 2 shows the mud cracks on the edge of a lake, to the extent of two feet. No. 3 is a series of cracks in an asphalt pavement, covering about two feet. No. 4 shows the form of cracks in the surface of a mesa in Arizona, the result of the summer heat, the length being about ten feet. No. 5 is a tracing from a drawing by Professor W.H. Pickering showing cracks in the lunar crater Eratosthenes, with an extent of fifty-five miles. The original drawing represented a much greater widening of the lines which Professor Pickering believes to be due to vegetation. I endeavored to trace the centre of each line and Professor Pickering said in regard to my tracing: "In one or two instances you have assumed that a crack went through the middle of a broad space, whereas, for aught we know, it may have gone along either edge, but otherwise the tracing obviously follows the outlines of my drawing." It evidently gives a cachet of what appears to be veritable cracks on the surface, and it is interesting to compare this drawing with the cracks in the asphalt. In No. 6 are two drawings; one marked A represents cracks in a region of the Moon known as Flammarion's Circle, the other B represents the great rift in southern Africa, probably the most stupendous phenomenon in geological history. This rift has been traced from the Valley of the Jordan through the Dead Sea, into the Gulf of Akaba, thence into the Red Sea, which it follows the entire length, then turning southwesterly into Africa and branching, one branch takes in Lake Tanganyika, and the other branch Lake Nyassa. A portion north of Nyassa is still problematical. Here is a crack 1,500 miles long, most of it filled with detritus, water, or forest. It would be an interesting question whether such a fracture would be visible even from the Moon. A glance at these various figures will give one a conception of the similarity of cracks, their irregular contour, their indeterminate origin, and ending. Cracks arising from shrinkage vary only in the material in which the crack takes place; the conditions resulting from shrinkage or pulling apart are precisely the same.

Let us now glance at a series of figures on Plate VI, page 113; their artificial character may be recognized at once. They are all designed for channels or thoroughfares for the transportation of men, merchandise, or water. No. 1 represents a tracing from a railroad map of a county in Illinois. The convergence of lines to common centres, and, in one case, parallel lines may be seen. The length of the region represented is thirty-seven miles. No. 2 is a tracing of streets in a district of Montreal, covering an extent of half a mile. No. 3 is a tracing of a small region near Phoenix, Arizona, showing irrigating canals. The larger ones follow contour lines of the surface; the smaller ones are usually laid out in rectangular form to correspond with the original land sections and sub-sections, the boundary lines of which run north and south, east and west. No. 4 represents the canals converging on Groningen, Holland. No. 5 is a tracing from a hemispherical map of Mars made by Schiaparelli, and No 6 is traced from a photograph of a globe on which Lowell has carefully drawn the canals, oases, etc., of Mars covering a land extent of 7,400 miles. The remarkable artificiality of all these figures must be admitted. The lines on the first four figures are laid out by an intelligence for similar purposes. No. 1 for the conveyance of passengers and freight; No. 2 for the traffic of a city; No. 3 for the conveyance of water; No. 4 for purposes of navigation, and Nos. 5 and 6, according to Lowell's view, for the conveyance of water from melting polar snow caps for irrigation purposes. A simple, rational explanation, as their great width and geodetic precision forbid any other.

Let one contemplate these lines of Mars and compare them with the natural cracks on Plate V and he will appreciate the emphatic words of Lowell when he says: "The mere aspect is enough to cause all theories about glaciation, fissures, or surface cracks to die an instant and natural death." Consider any other possible tracing of lines on the face of the Earth as the result of Nature's forces, such as river beds, caÑons, chasms, fissures, faults, rifts, precipitous valleys, fiords, the results of sharp folds in the strata, parallel chains of mountains, and none of these lines would be straight, none of them would be of uniform width, and few of them would have the enormous breadth of the Martian lines, they would begin nowhere and, with the exception of the rivers, end nowhere. This definition holds good as the result of natural forces from the microscopic crackle on a dinner plate, to a crack in the Earth's crust fifteen hundred miles long.

Having briefly alluded to some of the theories advanced to explain the geodetic network of lines encircling Mars?—?theories in one case so puerile, and in another case an interpretation so monstrous, though endorsed by astronomers of standing?—?we turn to the suggestion that these various lines are artificial, that they were designed for a definite purpose, namely, to conduct water from those regions alone where water is found for the purposes of irrigation. We shall call attention to a parallel case where the great ice caps and glaciers of the Himalaya Mountains supply water, by their melting, for thousands of miles of irrigating canals. Let us ask ourselves whether if the snows of the Himalayas gradually failed, the crowded millions of India would not if necessary reach out to the farthest North for this precious fluid? Our great centres of population at the present time are reaching out in every direction for water supply. How long would it take New York City to decide in case of water famine to tap the Great Lakes to the north, or to establish pipe lines to the north pole, if it were necessary to go that distance for water?

From the foregoing it is seen that the question of water supply has engaged the energies of man from pre-historic times. These great irrigating works are found, however, in regions of sterility, or light rainfall, from the rude irrigating canals of ancient Peru and Arizona to the marvellous accomplishments of the hydraulic engineer in India and Egypt. This demand for more water is not, however, confined to regions of sterility, the reaching out of cities for supplies of water for potable purposes and for the wasteful disposal of sewage was inevitable. What shall we say, however, of the notes of warning in regions of rain?

England is considered a land of humidity and copious rains, and yet the alarm is already sounded that in the no distant future an appalling catastrophe may threaten her in the failure of her water supply. In a special despatch to the "New York Herald," Mr. Bently, president of the Royal Meteorological Society, is quoted as saying at its Annual Meeting, "So enormous now is the drain upon the country's available supplies, so much have the growth of cities, the disappearance of forested areas, the extent of street surface impervious to moisture, and the diversion of the rivers, lakes, and other natural fresh water reservoirs from their natural function of irrigators and distributors of the all essential moisture to the land interfered in England with nature's arrangements, that English engineers and meteorologists at no distant date may find a task of almost insuperable difficulty awaiting their endeavors."

Dr. Mill, a rainfall expert, on being consulted by a "Daily Mail" correspondent regarding this alarming statement, was of the opinion that the question would require early consideration. We quote his words as follows: "Legislation is needed in the immediate future for the regulation of the rivers. The great question is how to store the water which at present runs to waste on the coasts."

"The planting of trees on the high water-sheds is one of the first solutions of the problem. The chief difficulty lies in the scarcity of suitable land available for building large reservoirs, and at some future date the services of engineers will be required to reform the present arrangement of reservoirs."

"In Austria the government issues an annual report on the condition of the Danube and detailed statistics of the rainfall, with a view to storing all the available water supplies. The work done by the Austrian government I am doing in regard to the British Isles on my own responsibility, but the rainfall and the river conditions are only a portion of a much larger problem."

The above quotations indicate that even now an alarm is felt in countries of fair rainfall regarding the possible failure of the water supply in the near future and is perhaps a premonition as to what may be absorbing our energies in centuries to come. Such possibilities as here suggested may offer an additional clew to an interpretation of the Martian markings. The unnatural straightness of these interlacing lines on Mars, many of them following the arcs of great circles, their uniform width throughout, their always starting from definite areas, their convergence to common centres, and their varying visibility synchronizing with the Martian seasons finds no parallel in natural phenomena.

If in the mind's eye we were to survey the Earth from Mars the only feature we should find at all paralleling the lines in Mars would be found in the level regions of the West, where, for thousands of miles, the land extends in vast level stretches. In these regions would be found lines of railroads running in straight courses, starting from definite places, converging to common centres, their sides, in certain seasons, conspicuous with ripening grain fields, or again the work of the United States Reclamation Bureau running its irrigating canals in various directions through that great region. Both these kinds of lines would be artificial and both designed for purposes of conveyance?—?in the one case, merchandise and passengers, in the other case, water.

If the Martian lines are not artificial some other theories must be offered than those thus far advanced to explain their origin and purpose. The phenomenon of the extraordinary doubling of the canals when first announced was immediately disbelieved; when, however, other observers confirmed Schiaparelli's discoveries, and it became evident that these double lines had a veritable existence, the phenomenon was regarded as an evidence that profound physical changes were going on in the planet. Thus in 1887 Mr. Stanislaus Maunier, in "La Nature,"6 in alluding to the remarkable discovery of the doubling of the canals, says: "Mars at this moment is the theatre of phenomena of stupendous grandeur which will be adequate in a few years to impress profound changes in its aspect." This was written in 1887, and continuous observations of the planet since that time have shown no profound changes, or changes of any kind beyond those which periodically occur with the seasons. Since Mars is a much older planet than the Earth, it seems reasonable to believe that it is more stable, that volcanoes and earthquakes have long ceased to manifest their activities, that erosive action by water is no longer in evidence, subsidence and elevation of continental areas no longer occur. From this condition of the planet it is impossible to believe that the curious phenomenon of the doubling or gemination of the canals can be due to any physical changes now taking place.

Schiaparelli said that many of the ingenious suppositions advanced to account for this doubling of the canals would not have been proposed had their authors been able to examine the gemination with their own eyes; he further says: "It is far easier to explain the gemination if we are willing to introduce the forces pertaining to organic nature; here the field of plausible supposition is immense," and in this field of suppositions he suggests "changes of vegetation over vast areas." Let any intelligent mind soberly consider this rational suggestion of Schiaparelli's and compare it with other theories that have been advanced, and he will be compelled to admit that vegetation alone gives us at least a clew to the extraordinary behavior of these parallel lines. To understand the symmetry, the suddenness, and the vast extent of this phenomenon, the further explanation of vegetation superinduced by artificial methods will alone complete the answer.

Sir Robert Ball cannot conceive how Mars, a much older planet, should develop synchronously with the Earth creatures of intelligence, an event which he insists should have occurred ages earlier in its history. In this supposition he is quite right, for if there are creatures of intelligence in Mars these should have appeared much earlier, and that is probably what has happened. The problem is one parallel to that urged by Sir Boyd Dawkins in regard to the evidences of man in the Tertiary rocks. Dawkins argued that since the mammals in the Tertiary had changed so profoundly, many types becoming extinct, if man had lived at that time he also should have been affected by the same influences, and should have changed accordingly. It has been clearly pointed out by Cope and others that the moment intelligence became a factor in natural selection it was seized upon to the relative exclusion of physical characteristics, hence but little change, otherwise than an intellectual one, has taken place in man since his progenitors took to the trees and made up by agility, cunning, and alertness what they lacked in physical strength. In the same way, if, in the past history of Mars, an intelligent creature appeared he must have survived under precisely similar conditions, and long after favorable environments had passed that were implicated in making him what he was.

Admitting that there is an intelligent creature of some kind in Mars, is it reasonably conceivable that he should have caused such changes in the surface features of that planet as to be visible from the Earth? Professor Newcomb concludes, in a recent article in "Harper's Magazine," that "we cannot expect to see any signs of the works of inhabitants in Mars, if such exist." Let us, however, reverse the proposition and ask ourselves if man has been implicated in any changes in the surface appearance of the Earth that would be visible from Mars? And I think the question can be answered in only one way. The vast cities such as Pekin, Tokio, London, and New York, with their great expanse of tiled and slated roofs, and sterile streets, would certainly have a different albedo from the grass and trees in the immediate outskirts of such places. The tracts of land reclaimed from the sea, and still more the enormous areas which have been rendered green by irrigation, must, of all contrasts, be markedly conspicuous. To realize the extent of this work, it is only necessary to state that in Egypt 6,000,000 acres depend upon irrigation, and this area to be vastly increased in a short time; the Western states of America with 10,000,000 acres, and this area being rapidly augmented by the work of the United States Reclamation Bureau; in India 25,000,000 acres under irrigation, and this being continually added to; above all, however, the vast extent of territory from which the dark forests have been removed in this country, and more particularly in China, must make a visible landmark. If one can recall the appearance of forests in the southern and middle part of Maine, say from Bethel or Bangor, fifty years ago, he will remember that from the top of any hill a stretch of dark blue forest was to be seen as far as the eye could reach, and now from the same elevations one can see only an occasional clump of blue forest, while the remaining surface is, according to the season, either bright green, yellow with ripening vegetation, or white with snow, out of which the dark clumps of forest growth are most conspicuous. Considering the contrasting colors in one year covering hundreds of thousands of square miles in various portions of the country, the question naturally arises which of these contrasts would be most conspicuous,?—?the colors just mentioned of solid land surfaces of vegetation, snow, and desert, or diaphanous clouds with their gray shadows. We are told that Jupiter, with the mean distance at opposition of nearly 400,000,000 miles, shows its clouds, its red spot, and the shadow transits of its satellites. Surely if these conditions are seen from the Earth, the changes in the Earth's appearance above described might be seen from Mars, which at its nearest opposition is only 35,000,000 miles away, and, conversely, any change of similar character in Mars would certainly be visible from the Earth.