Page Content (OCR)
26 his canals proceeded startlingly to become two, until some twenty of them had thus doubled. This capped the climax to his own wonderment, and, it is needless to add, to other people's incredulity; for nobody else had yet succeeded in seeing the canals at all, let alone seeing them double. Undeterred by the general skepticism, he confirmed, at each fresh opposition, his previous discoveries; which, in view of the fact that no one else did, rather tended in astronomical circles to the opposite result. For nine years he labored thus alone, having his visions all to himself. It was not till 1886 that any one but he saw the canals. In April of that year Perrotin at Nice first did so. The occasion was the setting-up of the great Nice glass of twenty-nine inches aperture. In spite of the great size of the glass, however, a first attempt resulted in nothing but failure. So did a second, and Perrotin was on the point of abandoning the search altogether when, on the 15th of the month, he suddenly detected one of the canals, the Phison. His assistant, M. Thollon, saw it immediately afterward. After this they managed to make out several others, some single, some double, substantially as Schiaparelli had drawn them; the slight discrepancies between their observations and his being, in point of fact, the best of confirmations. Since then other observers have contrived to detect the canals, the list of the successful increasing at each opposition, although even now their number might almost be told on one's hands and feet. The fact that so few men have yet seen these lines is due to poor air. That in ordinary atmosphere the canals are not easy objects is certain; while for the detection of their peculiar fineness and straightness a steady air is essential. So also is attentive perception on the part of the observer, size of aperture being distinctly a secondary matter. That Schiaparelli discovered the canals with an 8 1/2 object-glass, and that the 26-inch at Washington has refused to show them to this day, are facts that speak with emphasis on the point. Although skepticism as to the existence of the so-called canals seems now pretty well dispelled, disbelief still makes a desperate stand against their peculiar appearance, dubbing accounts of their straightness and duplication as sensational, whatever that may mean in such connection; for that they are both straight and double, as described, is certain,--a statement I make after having seen them instead of before doing so, as is the case with the gifted objectors. Doubt, however, will not wholly cease till more people have seen them, which will not happen till the importance of atmosphere in the study of planetary detail is more generally appreciated than it is to-day. To look for the canals with a large instrument in poor air is like trying to read a page of fine print kept dancing before one's eyes, and increase of magnification increases the motion. Advance in our study of other worlds depends upon choosing the very best atmospheric sites for our rs observatories. As we shall now have to call these Martian things by their names,--our names, that is,--it may be well to consider cursorily the nomenclature which has been evolved on the subject. Unfortunately, the planet has been quite too much benamed,--benamed, indeed, out of all recognition. There are no less than five or six systems current for its general topographical features. The result is that it has become something of a specialty just to