attention to it, to the neglect of other things. But it was soon found
that Schiaparelli's lines--to which he gave the name "canals," merely on
account of their shape and appearance, and without any intention to
define their real nature--were excessively difficult telescopic objects.
Eight or nine years elapsed before any other observer corroborated
Schiaparelli's observations, and notwithstanding the "sensation" which
the discovery of the canals produced they were for many years regarded
by the majority of astronomers as an illusion.

But they were no illusion, and in 1881 Schiaparelli added to the
astonishment created by his original discovery, and furnished additional
grounds for skepticism, by announcing that, at certain times, many of
the canals geminated, or became double! He continued his observations at
each subsequent opposition, adding to the number of the canals observed,
and charting them with classical names upon a detailed map of the
planet's surface.

At length in 1886 Perrotin, at Nice, detected many of Schiaparelli's
canals, and later they were seen by others. In 1888 Schiaparelli greatly
extended his observations, and in 1892 and 1894 some of the canals were
studied with the 36-inch telescope of the Lick Observatory, and in the
last-named year a very elaborate series of observations upon them was
made by Percival Lowell and his associates, Prof. William C. Pickering
and Mr. A.E. Douglass, at Flagstaff, Arizona. Mr. Lowell's charts of the
planet are the most complete yet produced, containing 184 canals to
which separate names have been given, besides more than a hundred other
markings also designated by individual appellations.

It should not be inferred from the fact that Schiaparelli's discovery
in 1877 excited so much surprise and incredulity that no glimpse of the