telescope, and the most excellent ``seeing,'' to render the
enigmatical lines visible at all, and many searchers were unable to
detect them. But Schiaparelli continued his studies in the serene sky
of Italy, and produced charts of the gridironed face of Mars
containing so much astonishing detail that one had either to reject
them in toto or to confess that Schiaparelli was right. As subsequent
favorable oppositions of Mars occurred, other observers began to see
the ``canals'' and to confirm the substantial accuracy of the Italian
astronomer's work, and finally few were found who would venture to
affirm that the ``canals'' did not exist, whatever their meaning might
be.

When Schiaparelli began his observations it was generally believed, as
we have said, that the dusky areas on Mars were seas, and since
Schiaparelli thought that the ``canals'' invariably began and ended at
the shores of the ``seas,'' the appropriateness of the title given to
the lines seemed apparent. Their artificial character was immediately
assumed by many, because they were too straight and too suggestively
geometrical in their arrangement to permit the conclusion that they
were natural watercourses. A most surprising circumstance noted by
Schiaparelli was that the ``canals'' made their appearance after the
melting of the polar snow in the corresponding hemisphere had begun,
and that they grew darker, longer, and more numerous in proportion as
the polar liquidation proceeded; another very puzzling observation was
that many of them became double as the season advanced; close beside
an already existing ``canal,'' and in perfect parallelism with it,
another would gradually make its appearance. That these phenomena
actually existed and were not illusions was proved by later
observations, and today they are seen whenever Mars is favorably
situated for observation.