Mars

the planet next outside of the earth in the solar system. Its mean distance from the sun is one and one-half times that of the earth. As the distance from the earth is anywhere from 35,000,000 to 250,000,000 miles, Mars is fifty times as bright one time as at another. It is conspicuously red or fiery in color, and moves in an apparently lawless, vigorous way,-- qualities which led the ancients to give it the name of their god of war. Many have argued that conditions in Mars warrant a belief that it is inhabited. Its day is longer than ours by half an hour. Its year consists of 687 of our days, giving longer seasons. Its surface is about two-sevenths and its volume one-seventh of that of the earth. A body weighing 100 pounds on the earth would weigh about 38 pounds on Mars. With the same strength one could leap three times as high on Mars as on the earth. Mars has an atmosphere. White caps at the poles grow larger and smaller with the change of season, suggesting fields of polar snow. The surface of the planet is furrowed with apparent canals which are conjectured by some to be irrigating canals. Changes in the color of large areas are attributed to alternating seasons of vegetation and drought. All these speculations are without much foundation in the presence of a strong probability that the planet is frigidly cold. Mars has two small moons with months of eight days and thirty days. Their recent discovery (1877) has turned the laugh on Swift who, in apparent derision of astronomers, wrote in Gulliver's Travels, "They have discovered two lesser stars, or satellites, which revolve about Mars, whereof the innermost revolves in the space of ten hours, the outermost in twenty-one and one-half."