y the most valuable contributions to
science. My own view of the inhabitants of Mars is that they are
Rational Articulates. Rational they certainly are, and, although I am no
naturalist, I venture to pronounce them Articulates. I do not mean
anything disrespectful to these learned inhabitants of Mars in saying
that their figure and movements reminded me of crickets: for I never
have watched the black field-crickets in New England, standing on tiptoe
to reach a blade of grass, without a feeling of admiration at their
gentlemanly figure and the gracefulness of their air. But what is more
important, I am told that Articulates breathe through spiracles in the
sides of their bodies; and I know that these planetary men breathe
through six mouths, three on either side of the body, entirely different
in appearance and character from the seventh mouth in their face,
through which they eat.

In the volumes of notes which will be published by the Smithsonian
Institution as soon as the necessary engravings can be finished, will
also appear all that I was able to learn concerning the natural history
of that planet, under the strict limitation, to which I was subjected,
of bringing to Earth nothing but what I could carry about my own
person.[A]

I was, myself, particularly interested in investigating the Martial
language, which differs entirely from our terrestrial tongues in not
being articulate. Each of the six lateral mouths of these curious men is
capable of sounding only one vowel, and of varying its musical pitch
about five or six semitones. Thus, their six mouths give them a range of
two and a half or three octaves. The right-hand lowest mouth is lowest
in pitch, and gives a sound resembling the double _o_ in _moon_; the
next lowest in pitch is the lowest left-hand mouth, and its vowel is
more like _o_ in _note_. Thus they alternate, the highest left-hand
mouth being highest in pitch, and uttering a sound resembling a long
_ee_. The sound of each of the six is so individual, that, before I had
been there six months, I could recognize, even in a stranger, the tones
of each one of the six mouths. But they seldom use one mouth at a time.
Their simplest ideas, such as the names of the most familiar objects,
are expressed by brief melodic phrases, uttered by one mouth alone.
Closely allied ideas are expressed by the same phrase uttered by a
different mouth, and so with a different vowel-sound. But most ideas are
complex; and thes