I fear my own conclusion about Mars is that his present condition
is very desolate. I look on the ruddiness of tint to which I have
referred as one of the signs that the planet of war has long since
passed its prime. There are lands and seas in Mars, the vapor of water
is present in his air, clouds form, rains and snows fall upon his
surface, and doubtless brooks and rivers irrigate his soil, and carry
down the moisture collected on his wide continents to the seas whence
the clouds had originally been formed. But I do not think there is
much vegetation on Mars, or that many living creatures of the higher
types of Martian life as it once existed still remain. All that is
known about the planet tends to show that the time when it attained
that stage of planetary existence through which our earth is now
passing must be set millions of years, perhaps hundreds of millions of
years, ago. He has not yet, indeed, reached that airless and waterless
condition, that extremity of internal cold, or in fact that utter
unfitness to support any kind of life, which would seem to prevail
in the moon.
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