number of the celebrated “canals” and showed that these constituted an extraordinary and characteristic feature of the planet’s geography.  He called them “canali,” meaning thereby “channels.”  It is remarkable indeed that a mistranslation appears really responsible for the initiation of the idea that these features are canals.

In 1882 Schiaparelli startled the astronomical world by declaring that he saw some of the canals double—­that is appearing as two parallel lines.  As these lines span the planet’s surface for distances of many thousands of miles the announcement naturally gave rise to much surprise and, as I have said, to much scepticism.  But he resolutely stuck to his statement.  Here is his map of 1882.  It is sufficiently startling.

In 1892 he drew a new map.  It adds a little to the former map, but the doubling was not so well seen.  It is just the strangest feature about this doubling that at times it is conspicuous, at times invisible.  A line which is distinctly seen as a single line at one time, a few weeks later will appear distinctly to consist of two parallel lines; like railway tracks, but tracks perhaps 200 miles apart and up to 3,000 or even 4,000 miles in length.

Many speculations were, of course, made to account for the origin of such features.  No known surface peculiarity on the Earth or moon at all resembles these features.  The moon’s surface as you know is cracked and

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streaked.  But the cracks are what we generally find cracks to be—­either aimless, wandering lines, or, if radiating from a centre, then lines which contract in width as they leave the point of rupture.  Where will we find cracks accurately parallel to one another sweeping round a planet’s face with steady curvature for, 4,000 miles, and crossing each other as if quite unhampered by one another’s presence?  If the phenomenon on Mars be due to cracks they imply a uniformity in thickness and strength of crust, a homogeneity, quite beyond all anticipation.  We will afterwards see that the course of the lines is itself further opposed to the theory that haphazard cracking of the crust of the planet is responsible for the lines.  It was also suggested that the surface of the planet was covered with ice and that these were cracks in the ice.  This theory has even greater difficulties than the last to contend with.  Rivers have been suggested.  A glance at our own maps at once disposes of this hypothesis.  Rivers wander just as cracks do and parallel rivers like parallel cracks are unknown.

In time the many suggestions were put aside.  One only remained.  That the lines are actually the work of intelligence; actually are canals, artificially made, constructed for irrigation purposes on a scale of which we can hardly form any conception based on our own earthly engineering structures.

During the opposition of 1894, Percival Lowell, along with A. E. Douglass, and W. H. Pickering,