V
OASES
I. SPOTS IN THE LIGHT REGIONS
Suggestive of irrigation as the strange network of lines that covers the surface of Mars appears to be, the suggestion takes on more definite shape yet with the last addition to our knowledge of the planet's surface detail,—the recognition of a singularly correlated system of spots.
The canals, as we have seen, are very remarkably attached to one another. Indeed, the manner with which they manage to combine undeviating direction with meetings by the way grows more and more marvelous, the more one studies it. The meeting-places, or junctions, are evidently for something in the constitution of the canals. The crossings, in fact, seem to be the end and aim of the whole system; the canals, but means to that end. So much is at once inferable from the great intrinsic improbability that such crossings can be due to chance.
This inference receives, apparently, striking corroboration when the planet is more minutely
