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13 inclination which has not been equaled since 1877. The dip of the pole displayed the snow-cap to great advantage, and enabled the metamorphosis it underwent to be specially well seen. Through June and July the snows were melting very fast, at the rate of hundreds of square miles a day. Such waning of them under the summer sun has been regularly observed to take place for the past two hundred years. At every Martian summer they shrink away to next to nothing, as systematically as the Martian summer comes on,--an action on their part highly indicative of their character. But another bit of behavior in their immediate surroundings is yet more significant, and in the case of the southern hemisphere has never, apparently, been noticed before. Practically at the first observation made at Flagstaff in June, there showed, bordering the edge of the snow, a narrow, dark blue band or ribbon of color encircling the cap. The band varied in width at different places, being widest where the blue-green areas to the north of it were widest, and narrowest where they were narrowest. Its greatest breadth was about two hundred and twenty miles, its least about one hundred. In two places it expanded into great bays, the more prominent of them being just above the largest blue- green area on the disc. That the width of this antarctic girdle was proportionate to the width of the blue-green areas below it is a highly suggestive fact. Both bays were blue, the larger and more striking one especially so, appearing in good seeing of a beautiful cobalt blue, like some Martian grotto of Capri. Both the band and its bays were contrasted with the blue-green areas contiguous to them, somewhat in tint, but yet more in tone. They were bluer, and distinctly darker. This hinted at a difference of constitution, which hint was emphasized by the action of the band; for as the snow shrank back toward the pole the blue belt followed it, keeping pace with its retreat. Instead of remaining in the place where it had first appeared, as it must have done had it been a permanent marking upon the surface of the planet, it withdrew steadily southward, so as always to border the melting snow. At about the same time a rift made its appearance in the midst of the ice-cap. On June 9, when on the meridian early in the morning it looked like a huge cart-track coming down toward one through the snow. It proved to be three hundred and fifty miles wide, and debouched into the dark encircling band. A second narrower rift ran into it near the centre cu of the cap. On the same morning, about half past five o'clock, starlike points suddenly shone out upon the snow, between the great bay and the first rift. After shining there for a few minutes they as suddenly vanished. It is evident what these were,--not fabled flash-lights of the Martians, but the glint of snow-slopes tilted at just the angle to reflect the sun toward the earth. On subsequent mornings others appeared, not so brilliant, the position of the planet with regard to the earth having slightly shifted in the mean time. There is something romantic in the thought of these far-off glistens from other-world antarctic snows, and in the sight there is corroboration of the snow's character.