CHAPTER IV.

IS ANIMAL LIFE POSSIBLE ON MARS?

Having now shown, that, even admitting the accuracy of all Mr. Lowell’s observations, and provisionally accepting all his chief conclusions as to the climate, the nature of the snow-caps, the vegetation, and the animal life of Mars, yet his interpretation of the lines on its surface as being veritably ‘canals,’ constructed by intelligent beings for the special purpose of carrying water to the more arid regions, is wholly erroneous and rationally inconceivable.  I now proceed to discuss his more fundamental position as to the actual habitability of Mars by a highly organised and intellectual race of material organic beings.

Water and Air essential to Life.

Here, fortunately, the issue is rendered very simple, because Mr. Lowell fully recognises the identity of the constitution of matter and of physical laws throughout the solar-system, and that for any high form of organic life certain conditions which are absolutely essential on our earth must also exist in Mars.  He admits, for example, that water is essential, that an atmosphere containing oxygen, nitrogen, aqueous vapour, and carbonic acid gas is essential, and that an abundant vegetation is essential; and these of course involve a surface-temperature through a considerable portion of the year that renders the existence of these—­especially of water—­possible and available for the purposes of a high and abundant animal life.

Blue Colour the only Evidence of Water.

In attempting to show that these essentials actually exist on Mars he is not very successful.  He adduces evidence of an atmosphere, but of an exceedingly scanty one, since the greatest amount he can give to it is—­ “not more than about four inches of barometric pressure as we reckon it";[7] and he assumes, as he has a fair right to do till disproved, that it consists of oxygen and nitrogen, with carbon-dioxide and water-vapour, in approximately the same proportions as with us.  With regard to the last item—­the water-vapour—­there are however many serious difficulties.  The water-vapour of our atmosphere is derived from the enormous area of our seas, oceans, lakes, and rivers, as well as from the evaporation from heated lands and tropical forests of much of the moisture produced by frequent and abundant rains.  All these sources of supply are admittedly absent from Mars, which has no permanent bodies of water, no rain, and tropical regions which are almost entirely desert.  Many writers have therefore doubted the existence of water in any form upon this planet, supposing that the snow-caps are not formed of frozen water but of carbon-dioxide, or some other heavy gas, in a frozen state; and Mr. Lowell evidently feels this to be a difficulty, since the only fact he is able to adduce in favour of the melting snows of the polar caps producing water is,