data are not definite enough to furnish much deduction. But from the
fact that our own development has been comparatively a recent thing, and
that a long time would be needed to bring even Mars to his present
geological condition, we may judge any life he may support to be not
only relatively, but really older than our own. From the little we can
see such appears to be the case. The evidence of handicraft, if such it
be, points to a highly intelligent mind behind it. Irrigation,
unscientifically conducted, would not give us such truly wonderful
mathematical fitness in the several parts to the whole as we there
behold.... Quite possibly such Martian folk are possessed of inventions
of which we have not dreamed, and with them electrophones and
kinetoscopes are things of a bygone past, preserved with veneration in
museums as relics of the clumsy contrivances of the simple childhood of
the race. Certainly what we see hints at the existence of beings who are
in advance of, not behind us, in the journey of life."[3]

[Footnote 3: Mars, by Percival Lowell, p. 207 _et seq._]

Granted the existence of such a race as is thus described, and to them
it might not seem a too appalling enterprise, when their planet had
become decrepit, with its atmosphere thinned out and its supply of water
depleted, to grapple with the destroying hand of nature and to prolong
the career of their world by feats of chemistry and engineering as yet
beyond the compass of human knowledge.

It is confidence, bred from considerations like these, in the superhuman
powers of the supposed inhabitants of Mars that has led to the popular
idea that they are trying to communicate by signals with the earth.
Certain enigmatical spots of light, seen at the edge of the illuminated
disk of Mars, and projecting into the unilluminated part--for Mars,