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27 know the names. The Syrtis Major, for example, appears under the following aliases: the Syrtis Major, the Mer du Sablier, the Kaiser Sea, the Northern Sea, to say nothing of translations of these, such as the Hour-Glass Sea. After which ample baptism it is a trifle disconcerting to have the sea turn out, apparently, not to be a sea at all. Everybody has tried his hand at naming the planet, first and last; naming a thing being man's nearest approach to creating it. Proctor made a chart of the planet, and named it thoroughly; Flammarion drew another chart, and also named it thoroughly, but differently; Green made a third map, and gave it a third set of names; Schiaparelli followed with a fourth, and furnished it with a brand-new set of his own; and finally W. H. Pickering found it necessary to give a few new names, just for particularization. To know, therefore, what part of the planet anybody means when he mentions it, one has to keep in his head enough names for five worlds. To cap which, it is to be remarked that not one of them is the thing's real--that is, its Martian--name, after all! Fortunately, with the canals matters are not so desperate, because so few people have seen them. Schiaparelli's monopoly of the sight pleasingly prevented, in their case, christening competition. What is more, he named them very judiciously and most picturesquely after mythologic river names. Where he got his names is another matter. Whether he started by being as learned in such lore as he afterward became may well be doubted. Certainly one of the greatest discoveries made at Flagstaff has been the discovery of the meaning of Schiaparelli's names; some of them still defying the penetrating power of the ordinary encyclopaedia. Among them are classical mythologic ones of the class known only to that himself mythical character, Macaulay's every schoolboy, which speaks conclusively for their reconditeness. Others, I firmly believe, even that omniscient schoolboy can never have heard of. Want of space here precludes instances; but as a simple example I may say that the translation to Mars of the Phison and the Gehon, the two > lost rivers s of Mesopotamia, satisfactorily accounts for their not a a: A Sn cee -V eee With due mental reservation as to their meaning, I have adopted Schiaparelli's names, and where it has been necessary to name newly discovered canals have conformed as closely as possible to his general scheme. If even in an instance or two I have hit upon names that are incomprehensible, I shall feel that I have not disgraced my illustrious predecessor. For a brand-new thing no name is so good as one whose meaning nobody knows, except one that has no meaning at all. the same poetic imagination pervades the whole. For example, the central promontory of what used to be known as Dawes' Forked Bay, a prominent point, since it has for some time been used as the zero meridian for Martian longitudes, he calls the Fastigium Aryn. The Fastigium Aryn was, it appears, the cupola of the world, a mythic spot supposed to be the absolute centre of the earth regarded as a plane in mid-heaven,--a point midway between the north and south, the east and west, the zenith and nadir; an eminently suitable name, indeed, for the origin of longitudes and the beginning of time. being found on earth by modern explorers. Schiaparelli's scheme embraces all the other Martian features as well as the canals, and WM a a