considerably more about it at the next opposition. At this the tendril end of our knowledge of our neighbor we cannot expect hard wood.

From these observations, and those of Schiaparelli, I feel, however, tolerably sure that the phenomenon is not only seasonal but vegetal. Why it should take this form is one of the most pregnant problems about the planet. For it is the most artificial-looking phenomenon of an artificial-looking disk.

III. Spots in the dark regions

To return now from these outposts of investigation to our main subject-matter, and to another phenomenon of more recent discovery than the double canals, and yet more suggestive of interpretation. We have seen what shows at one end of the canals, their inner end; namely, the oasis. But it seems that there is also something exceptional at the other. At the mouth of each canal, at the edge of the so-called seas, appears a curious dark spot, of the form of a half-filled angle; the sort of a mark with which one checks items on a list. Its form is singularly appropriate, according to mundane ideas, for it appears before the canal itself is visible, as if to mark the spot where the canal will eventually be. It lies in the so-called seas, and looks to be of the same color as they, but deeper in tint.

All the canals that debouch into the dark regions are provided with these terminal triangles, except those that lead out of long estuaries, like the Nilosyrtis, the Hiddekel, the Gihon, and so forth. The double canals are provided with twin triangles. That the triangular patches are phenomena connected with the canals is evident from the fact that they never appear elsewhere. What exact purpose they serve is not so clear, but it would seem to be that of relay stations for the water before it enters the canals ; what we see, upon this supposition, being, not the station or reservoir itself, but the specially fertile area round it.

That, in addition to being in a way oases themselves, they serve some such purpose as the above, is further hinted at by two facts: first, that whereas the oases develop, apparently, after the canals leading to them, the triangular spots develop before the canals that lead out of them; second, Mr. Douglass finds that it is in them that the canals in the dark regions terminate. They are the end of the one system at the same time that they are the beginning of the other. They would, therefore, seem to be way-stations of some sort on the road taken by the water from the polar cap to the equator.

Paralleling in appearance the oases in the bright regions are round spots that occur at the junctions of the canals in the dark ones. Speaking figuratively, these are the heads of the nails in the coffin of the idea that the seas are seas: since, if the blue-green color came from water, there could not be permanent darker dots upon it connected by equally dark streaks. Speaking unfiguratively, this shows that the whole system of canals and specially fertilized spots is not confined to the deserts, but extends in a modified form over the areas of more or less vegetation.

There are thus two kinds of spots in the dark regions: those on their borders, and those in their midst. The position of the former--on the edge of the great deserts--implies a difference in kind, further emphasized by their shape. Following is the list of both kinds detected at Flagstaff: --

SPOTS IN THE DARK REGIONS.


 Astrae Lacus. 
 Benacus Lacus. 
 Cynia Lacus. 
 Flevo Lacus. 
 Hesperidum
Lacus. 
 Oxia Palus. 
 Spot at the mouth of the Phison. 
 " " " Euphrates. 
 " " " Daix on the Mare Icarium. 
" " " Daix on the Sabaeus Sinus. 
 Spot on the Socratis Promontorium. 
 Spot on the western side of the
Socratis Promontorium. 
 " " " " Margaritifer Sinus. 
 Spot at the mouth of the Jamuna on the Aurorae
Sinus. 
 " " " Ganges " " " 
 " " " Hebe " " " 
 " " " Agathodaemon " " 
 " " " Ambrosia on the Mare Australe. 
" " " Maeander on the Aonius Sinus. 
 " " " Gorgon on the Mare Sirenum. 
 " " " Erinaeus. 
 " " " Titan on
the Sinus Titanum. 
 " " " Cophen on the Mare Cimmerium. 
 " " " Laestrygon on the Mare Cimmerium. 
" " " Nereides " " " 
 " " " Cerberus " " " 
 " " " Chretes " " " 
 " " " Asopus on the Syrtis Major. 
 " " " Arosis
" " " 
 " " " Typhon " " " 
 spot south of the mouth of the Typhon on the Syrtis Major.

  By PanEris using Melati.

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