Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 June 1896 — Intelligence on Mars. [ARTICLE]

Intelligence on Mars.

year after year, when politics cease from troubling, there recurs the question as to the existence of Intelligent, sentient life on the planet Mars. The last outcrop of speculation grew from the discovery of M. Javelle of a luminous projection on the southern edge of the planet. The light was peculiar In several respects, and, among other interpretations, it was suggested that the Inhabitants of Mars were flashing messages to the conjectured inhabitants' oft the sister planet, earth. No attempt at reply was made; indeed, supposing our astronomer royal; with our best telescope, transported to Mars, ■f a red riot of fire running athwart the whole of London vyould scarce be visible to him. The question remains unanswered, probably unanswerable. There is no doubt that Mars is very like the earth. Its days and nights, its summers and winters differ only in their relative length from ours. It has land and oceans, continents and Islands, mountain ranges and inland seas. Its polar regions are covered with snows, and it has nni atmosphere and clouds, warm sunshine and gentlq rains. The spectroscope, that subtle analyst of the riiost distant stars, gives us reason to believe that the chemical elements familiar to us here exist on Mars. The planet, chemically and physically, is so like the earth that, as protoplasm, the only living material we know, came into existence on the earth, there is no great difficulty in supposing that it came, into existence on Mars. If reason be able to guide us, we know that protoplasm, at first amorphous and unintegrated, has been guided on this earth by natural forces into that marvelous series of forms and Integrations we call the animal and vegetable kingdoms. Why, under the similar guiding forces on Mars, should not protoplasm be the root of as fair a branching tree of living beings, and bear as fair a fruit of intelligent, sentient creatures?—London Saturday Review. „