nywhere, should we be likely to discover beings like
ourselves!

Mars takes rather more than half an hour longer to rotate than we do,
and as he is so much smaller than the earth, this means that he moves
round more slowly. His axis is bent at nearly the same angle as ours is.
Mars is much smaller than the earth, his diameter is about twice that of
the moon, and his density is about three-quarters that of the earth, so
that altogether, with his smaller size and less density, anything
weighing a hundred pounds here would only weigh some forty pounds on
Mars; and if, by some miraculous agency, you were suddenly transported
there, you would find yourself so light that you could jump enormous
distances with little effort, and skip and hop as if you were on
springs.

[Illustration: _Memoirs of the British Astronomical Association._

MAP OF MARS.]

Look at the map of Mars, in which the surface appears to be cut up into
land and water, continents and oceans. The men who first observed Mars
with accuracy saw that some parts were of a reddish colour and others
greenish, and arguing from our own world, they called the greenish parts
seas and the reddish land. For a long while no one doubted that we
actually looked on a world like our own, more especially as there was
supposed to be a covering of atmosphere. The so-called land and water
are much more cut up and mixed together than ours, it is true. Here and
there is a large sea, like that marked 'Mare Australe,' but otherwise
the water and the land are strangely intermingled. The red colour of the
part they named land puzzled astronomers a good deal, for our land seen
at the same distance would not appear so red, and they came at last to
the conclusion that vegetation on Mars must be red instead of green! But
after a while another disturbing fact turned up to upset their theories,
and that was that they saw canals, or what they called canals, on Mars.
These were long, straight, dark markings, such as you see on the map.
It is true that some people never saw these markings at all, and
disbelieved in their existence; but others saw them clearly, and watched
them change--first go fainter and then darker again. And quite recently
a photograph has been obtained which shows them plainly, so they must
have an existence, and cannot be only in the eye of the observer, as the
most sceptical people were wont to suggest. But further than this, one
astronomer announced that some of these l