Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 June 1896 — POPULAR SCIENCE. [ARTICLE]

POPULAR SCIENCE.

According to Paris publications the observations of Alva Clark and Percival Lowell in Arizona have increased the number of canals visible on Mars from seventy-nine to 183, all in geometrical proportions. The seas under these observations have turned to prairies and the lakes to oases. In an old Indian mound, near Cedarville. Ohio, was found a stone image of a woman in a sitting posture. It is smoothly and beautifully carved and shows the features clearly. Prbf. Stahl thinks the find dates back many centuries, probably to the times of the shepherd kings, and long prior to the mound builders. * The planet Mars resembles the earth more closely than any other of the solar system that we know anything about. Mars is smaller than the earth, and its specific gravity is less. Its atmosphere is rarer than that on the highest mountains. It has probably no oceans and very little free water, except in spring, when the snow melts. As to Mars being inhabited, it is not impossible. “Some interesting facts," says Dr. D. G. - Brinton in Science, “were developed by Prof. Ranke at the last meeting of , the German Anthropological Society, In relation to the relative weights of the brain and spinal cord in man. It is well known that man has not the heaviest brain of any animal; the whale and the elephant have heavier. Nor has he the heaviest in proportion to his weight; some singing biyds, various small apes and the mole have proportionately heavier brains. What Ranke brings out is that the weight of the human brain is much greater in proportion to the weight of the spinal cord than in any other veterbrate; and this, therefore, constitutes an anatomical distinction of man, strongly contrasting him with all other animal forms.”