wonderful in the fact that the question of the habitability of the
former has become one of extreme and wide-spread interest, giving rise
to the most diverse views, to many extraordinary speculations, and
sometimes to regrettably heated controversy. The first champion of the
habitability of Mars was Sir William Herschel, although even before
his time the idea had been suggested. He was convinced by the
revelations of his telescopes, continually increasing in power, that
Mars was more like the earth than any other planet. He could not
resist the testimony of the polar snows, whose suggestive conduct was
in such striking accord with what occurs upon the earth. Gradually, as
telescopes improved and observers increased in number, the principal
features of the planet were disclosed and charted, and ``areography,''
as the geography of Mars was called, took its place among the
recognized branches of astronomical study. But it was not before 1877
that a fundamentally new discovery in areography gave a truly
sensational turn to speculation about life on ``the red planet.'' In
that year Mars made one of its nearest approaches to the earth, and
was so situated in its orbit that it could be observed to great
advantage from the northern hemisphere of the earth. The celebrated
Italian astronomer, Schiaparelli, took advantage of this opportunity
to make a trigonometrical survey of the surface of Mars -- as coolly
and confidently as if he were not taking his sights across a
thirty-five-million-mile gulf of empty space -- and in the course of
this survey he was astonished to perceive that the reddish areas, then
called continents, were crossed in many directions by narrow, dusky
lines, to which he gave the suggestive name of ``canals.'' Thus a kind
of firebrand was cast into the field of astronomical speculation,
which has ever since produced disputes that have sometimes approached
the violence of political faction. At first the accuracy of
Schiaparelli's observations was contested; it required a powerful