and those found suited to the finest work were used. Many pictures were taken on each plate one after the other, both to vary the exposure and to catch such good moments as might chance. Seven hundred images were thus got in all; the days of best definition alone being utilized. The eagerness with which the first plate was scanned as it emerged from its last bath may be imagined, and the joy when on it some of the canals could certainly be seen. There were the old configurations of patches, the light areas and the dark, just as they looked through the telescope, and never till then otherwise seen of human eye, and there more marvelous yet were the grosser of those lines that had so piqued human curiosity, the canals of Mars. He who ran might now read, so that he had some acquaintance with photography. By Mr. Lampland’s thought, assiduity, and skill, the seemingly impossible had been done. After the initial success was thus assured, plates were taken at other points around the planet and other well-known features came out; “continents” and “seas,” “canals” and “oases,” the curious geography of the planet printed for the first time by itself in black and white. By chance on one of the plates a temporal event was found registered too, the first snowfall of the season, the beginning of the new polar cap, seen visually just before the plate happened to be put in and reproduced by it unmistakably. Upon the many images thirty-eight canals were counted in all, and one of them, the Nilokeras, double. Thus did the canals at last speak for their own reality themselves. PART III THE CANALS IN ACTION CHAPTER XXIII CANALS: KINEMATIC So far in our account of the phenomena we have regarded the lines, the spots, and everything that is theirs solely from the point of view of their appearance at any one time. In other words, we have viewed them only from a static standpoint. In this we have followed the course of the facts, since in this way were the canals first observed. We now come to a different phase of the matter,—the important disclosure, with continued looking, that these strange things show themselves to be subject to change. That is, they take on a kinematic character. This at once opens a fresh field of inquiry concerning them and widens the horizon of research. It increases the complexity of the problem, but at the same time makes it more determinate. For while it greatly augments the number of facts which must be collected toward an explanation of what the things are, these once acquired, it narrows the solution which can apply to them.