Now, it is not a little startling that the semblance of just such signs of intelligent interference with nature is what we discern on the face of Mars,—in the canals and oases. So dominant in its mien is the pencil-like directness of the canals as to be the trait that primarily strikes an unprejudiced observer who beholds this astounding system of lines under favorable definition for the first time, and its impressiveness only grows on him with study of the phenomena. That they suggested rule and compass, Schiaparelli said of them long ago, without committing himself as to what they were. In perception the great observer was, as usual, quite right; and the better they are seen the more they justify the statement. Punctilious in their precision, they outdo in method all attempts of freehand drawing to copy them. Often has the writer tried to represent the regularity he saw, only to draw and redraw his lines in vain. Nothing short of ruling them could have reproduced what the telescope revealed. Strange as their depiction may look in the drawings, the originals look stranger still. Indeed, that they should look unnatural when properly depicted is not unnatural if they are so in fact. For it is the geodetic precision which the lines exhibit that instantly stamps them to consciousness as artificial. The inference is so forthright as to be shared by those who have not seen them to the extent of instant denial of their objectivity. Drawings of them look too strange to be true. So scepticism imputes to the draughtsman their artificial fashioning, not realizing that by so doing it bears unconscious witness to their character. For in order to disprove the deduction it is driven to deny the fact. Now the fact can look after itself and will be recognized in time. For that the lines are as I have stated is beyond doubt. Each return of the planet shows them more and more geometric as sites are bettered and training improves. Suggestive of design as their initial appearance is, the idea of artificiality receives further sanction from more careful consideration, even from a static point of view, on at least eight counts:— 1. Their straightness; 2. Their individually uniform size; 3. Their extreme tenuity; 4. The dual character of some of them; 5. Their position with regard to the planet’s fundamental features; 6. Their relation to the oases; 7. The character of these spots; and, finally, 8. The systematic networking by both canals and spots of the whole surface of the planet. Now, no natural phenomena within our knowledge show such regularity on such a scale upon any one of these eight counts, _a fortiori_ upon all. When one considers that these lines run for thousands of miles in an unswerving direction, as far relatively as from London to Bombay, and as far actually as from Boston to San Francisco, the inadequacy of natural explanation becomes glaring.