servers) for the slightly greater distance; hence it is not surprising that the planet is now receiving a considerable amount of attention, especially as there are several large instruments available that were not erected in 1894. It was in that year that Professor Percival Lowell inaugurated his observatory at Flagstaff, Arizona, for the special purpose of making a continuous study of Mars under all configurations, and his work there has marked a notable advance in our knowledge of the planet's markings. The site was chosen with great care after many experiments, with a view to securing the best possible telescopic definition. The observatory is at an altitude of seven thousand feet, on the slopes of San Francisco Peak, Arizona; the mountain is clothed with pine and other trees, while it is surrounded by the great American desert, and it is probable that this combination explains the excellent definition, the dry desert air securing clearness, while the oasis of vegetation protects the ground from overheating, with consequent unsteadiness. Perhaps the most important single result obtained here was the successful photography of the planet, commenced four years ago by Professor Lowell's assistants, Lampland and Slipher, and repeated with still greater success in 1907; plates were used that were very sensitive to the red end of the spectrum, and a large number of short exposures were given, SO as to give more opportunity of catching the moments of best definition. Some of the exposures show one region of the planet well, some show another; but the principal canals appear on so many as to leave no doubt of their objective reality; and it must be remembered that, before these photographs were taken, this was not universally conceded, some asserting that they were wholly the product of optical illusion. It must be admitted

that the canals as photographed are much broader and less well-defined than as shown in the drawings; this is inevitable from the size of the grain of the plate, and on the whole these photographs greatly increase our confidence in the accuracy of the drawings; in fact, we can trust these up to a certain point as corresponding to actual detail on the planet; it is, however, questionable whether Professor Lowell does not press them further in this direction than is legitimate. Dr. G. Johnstone Stoney has reminded us in his recent pamphlet, "Telescopic Vision," that, owing to diffraction and interference, the telescopic image cannot give us an absolutely perfect representation of the original; thus in a microscope, when we press magnifying power beyond what the aperture will warrant, we get spurious images. Some of the very fine detail drawn by Lowell, such as the dark spots, or "oases," where the canals cross, or the triangular "carets," where they leave the dusky regions for the "deserts," may be of this spurious character, and one should always bear in mind the possibility of optical illusion in discussing details that are on the very limit of visibility.

Professor Lowell may claim to have made the presence of water on Mars extremely probable; the proof is twofold; first, the polar caps when melting are surrounded by a bluish band which follows them as they shrink, and whose light is said to show traces of polarization, though this last is such a delicate observation that too much stress should not be laid on it. Now carbonic acid does not pass through the liquid stage in melting (at least at the pressure which we must suppose to exist in the Martian atmosphere), so that this is evidence that the polar caps are composed of snow rather than frozen carbonic acid. The other piece of evidence is spectroscopic; Mr.

Slipher last year succeeded in photographing the Martian spectrum well beyond the point in the red where the great "a" band due to water-vapor lies; the water-vapor band shows unmistakably on the spectrum; this in itself is not conclusive, since the vapor might be in our own air; the moon's spectrum was therefore photographed at a similar altitude, and the "a" bands are much fainter in it, thus making it probable that water-vapor is present in Mars's atmosphere. That the amount must be very scanty is shown in various ways. First it has been shown that the dusky areas formerly called "seas" are not really so, since permanent canaliform markings have been traced across them, also since they show no polarization, and no sign of a reflected image of the sun, though this has been most carefully looked for. Secondly, because the polar caps melt so quickly (sometimes disappearing entirely) that it is evident the deposition of snow or frost must be shallow. Thirdly, because of the great clearness of the Martian air, and the rarity of cloud or mist. Professor Lowell strongly supports the theory that the canals are artificial, and have been constructed to conduct the scanty water supply over the planet for purposes of irrigation; in support of this he claims to have observed that they have a period of greatest visibility twice in the Martian year, those nearest the melting polar cap first becoming conspicuous, and the wave of visibility passing in succession down the latitudes, across the equator, till it dies out near the other cap, which in turn begins to melt, and sends a similar wave of visibility in the opposite direction. This, if fully established, would be very strong confirmation of his theory, but the canals at best are such difficult objects that we can scarcely feel entire confidence in slight changes in their degree of visi

The Times.

bility. His result, however, is based on several years' observations, and he states that the present appearance of Mars is in full accord with his expectation. We learn from the Bulletin de la Société astronomique de France for June that serious efforts are to be made in America to signal to the hypothetical inhabitants, Professor W. H. Pickering proposing to flash the sun by means of a large mirror mounted equatorially, while Professor Todd will be on the look-out for possible wireless messages reaching our earth from outer space. It must be admitted that this last sounds decidedly fantastic; but it is probable that the astronomers are carrying out these plans not so much on their own initiative as at the urgent request of wealthy Americans who have been persuaded by Professor Lowell's book of the existence of Martian inhabitants, and of the feasibility of communicating with them. It is clear, however, that even if we grant the inhabitants the chance, that they and we should simultaneously entertain the idea of sending or receiving signals is very slender. There is the further difficulty that when Mars is in opposition the earth is in conjunction with the sun, and therefore invisible. Signals sent from earth to Mars would have to be made some six weeks earlier or later, when the distance was much greater. No signal that we could make would be seen by dwellers in Mars unless they possessed optical instruments of a high degree of perfection. However, our interest in the planet is not dependent on the possible recognition of signs of intelligent life; many of those who have done good observing work have looked on the solution of this question as something altogether beyond our reach, and have been content to delineate the changing detail of the surface, without hoping to find an explanation of all they saw.

If the reading world could quite for get "The Prisoner of Zenda," and Anthony Hope should republish it, how many editions would it see? Not half, probably not one tenth as many as when it made its species fashionable. Imitated by at least a score of successful writers, and by as many justly unsuccessful, it would indeed have the charm of agreeable writing and would please the select few, but the royalty which is not royalty, the subject who simulates or is made to simulate royalty, and the subject who marries royalty are now as commonplace as Darby and Joan. As for the imaginary kingdom, those who construct it now take no more trouble than is necessary to make it a bob for the Hapsburg or Hohenzollern kite, and Mr. Harold Macgrath takes even less for his "The Goose Girl" and leaves the scene detached. The lover is Irish, but an American citizen and a fine fellow and the two heroines are charming. The three princes and two realms are equally fantastic, but pleasantly mysterious and it is only because its species is so large that the story fails to awaken enthusiasm in the reader. Those to whom the book comes as a first novel will not quarrel with it. Bobbs-Merrill Company.

The old fashioned whaling story, the "There she blows!" and "Starn all!" yarn is having a revival, and those familiar with whaling fiction only in its later phases with much glorified scenery and a love-story introduced, will find the elder style an agreeable change. Time was when every Massachusetts boy and girl could have learned the routine of whale fishing from the school "readers" and geographies, but after the year of misfornot only from the school books but tune the topic seemed to have departed

from conversation and from literature. Now comes a rumor that the right whale is returning and that whale oil and "parmaceti for the inward bruise" may come again, and so Mr. James Cooper Wheeler may be held to have chosen a fortunate moment for publishing his "There She Blows," a whaling yarn. It tells of one of the oldfashioned long voyages through many seas and describes not only the taking of the whale, but the disposition of his carcass, and the storage of the various valuable parts. The narrator is one of the crew and gives the hero's place to the captain, a shrewd, just man, who controls his crew because he understands each and every one of them. The book would have been worth writing if for no other purpose than to exhibit a man of this type. E. P. Dutton & Co.

Prof. R. M. Johnston's "The French Revolution" announces itself as "A Short History," and as it consists of less than three hundred pages the name is certainly justified. It is also an almost impartial history, equally free from rhapsodies on liberty and lamentations over the fall of picturesque unworthiness, and not exalting the claim of the fourteenth of July to be regarded as momentous in the his'tory of liberty. If one could wish that a little more emphasis were laid upon the enormity of the patrician folly which fluently prattled of philosophical theories too mischievous to be mentioned with safety, it is no small compensation to read the neat, contemptuous phrases with which the fashionable, sweet sensibility is treated. The horrors of the Terror are described as curtly as may be, but in words so well chosen that their frightfulness is by no means diminished. Indeed, the death of the Prin

cess de Lamballe has not many times, if ever, been so effectively described as in Professor Johnston's eight direct lines. An introductory chapter entitled "The Perspective of the French Revolution," and a second describing Versailles lead to the consideration of the economic crisis and the measures taken to meet it and these are all the preliminaries which the author permits himself; he nowhere indulges in that portrait drawing which is the almost invariable characteristic of histories of the French Revolution, but an occasional sketch, embodied in a phrase or two, shows that his abstinence does not proceed from inability. His preface does not say whether or not his work is intended for school or college use, but if it be, a chronological table and a fuller index should be added. Fabred Eglantine's nomenclature of the months and the rule for translating Julian dates into Revolutionary phrase make a welcome addition to the ordinary history of the period. Henry Holt & Co.

When Kant, or John Wilson, benevolently acting in his place, wrote that any man's full, candid, and unaffected account of what he had seen and thought would make the most interesting and instructive book in the world, he did not, it is fairly evident, intend that such an account should include every detail of every year, much less of every day. Comparatively few actions of a man's life from its beginning to its end are in the least interesting, and none but the Omniscient can know the bearing of many of them, and in most hands such a book would be a weariness to its readers. Mr. William Allen White is an exception inasmuch as his "A Certain Rich Man" is not dull throughout all its length, but only at the beginning which he is so illadvised as to write in the fashion of "The Court of Boyville." The remainder of the book is an extraordina

rily good study of thorough-going fiendishness. The subject of the study, John Barclay, clever while a boy, his small wants supplied by his mother's toil, becomes a little fiend as soon as he begins to depend upon himself, sacrificing all persons whose evil fate puts them in his way to his love of money, and thereafter his only change is in size. The loss of the young girl who loves him does affect him slightly, but having already set foot in the downward road of utter selfishness he takes no step backward. He drives every creature upon whom he has any influence either to misery or to sin, and takes measures which kill his wife, for no other end than to obtain money, and always he sins against knowledge. He repents at last, and sets himself right with the world at the expense of his entire fortune and for four years lives the life of a man, and then is given the privilege of dying in a manly fashion. His friends forgave him with wonderful charity, his mother loved him even while she despised his sin, and they and she wept over his grave, but Mr. White cannot convey the slightest glimmer of his charm to the reader once advised of his wickedness and he is the most repulsive creature to be found in modern fiction. Still Mr. White has produced a work of art. That he has not been able to blot out the memory of the sin by the picture of the repentance is merely to say that he is human and that his readers are like unto him and cannot forget in the very act of forgiving. Even the forgiveness is a severe task and it is to be feared that in real life-repentance even at the cost of millions would by no means end such hostility as Barclay had richly earned; but Mr. White has drawn some uncommonly good Christians to offset Barclay and has made a book worth all of his former work taken together. The Macmillan Company.