{369}
CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL
OF
POPULAR
LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.
CONTENTS
LIFE IN MARS.
IN ALL SHADES.
THE DUBLIN BANK GUARD.
TREASURE TROVE.
THE CORACLE.
HOSTESS AND GUEST.
WHAT CAREER FOR TOM?
SKETCHES.
No. 128.—Vol. III.
Price 1½d.
SATURDAY, JUNE 12, 1886.
LIFE IN MARS.
The question as to the habitability of other worldsthan ours has always been a very fascinating one,and, indeed, it is not surprising that it is so; forsince the days when the earth was debased fromher proud position as centre of the universe, andwas assigned her proper place among the planets,there seemed to be no particular reason why shealone should produce life, and why other planets,apparently as suitable for this purpose as she is,should wander uninhabited through space.
Up to the present time, it must be confessed, wehave met with nothing but disappointment in thisbranch of inquiry; for not only have we notdetected living creatures on any other member ofthe solar system, but, with the single exceptionwe are considering, there is apparently no otherbody whose surface is under conditions whichwould lead us to suppose that it might supportlife, or at least life in any form with which weare acquainted. It is of course useless to argueabout the possibility of life under entirely differentconditions; for instance, there might besome form of life on the sun; we can only saythat it would be so different from what we knowas life, that the term would be hardly applicable;and whether it is likely to exist or not,is a question which our limited experience doesnot allow us to answer one way or the other.
The moon, again, may be the home of livingcreatures; but they must be so constituted as toexist without air of any sort, which is rather contraryto our notions of life.
We will not here go to the length of examiningin detail the conditions which obtain on the surfaceof all the bodies within range of our telescopes;but we may state that in none of them,with the exception of the planet Mars, is thereany resemblance to our earth, and therefore lifeas we know it could not exist on them. WithMars, the case is different, and at first sight, thereappears to be a state of things which approximatesclosely to that which obtains here. The planetMars appears to the naked eye a deep red colour,and when examined with the telescope, we seethat a large part of his surface is red; but betweenthe red, and intersecting it in all directions