In examining the Earth, then, as we have examined Mars, the Martian would find large yellow and reddish areas, extensive greenish areas, and, besides, large regions of varying shades of blue, possibly, occupying three-fourths of the Earth's surface. The yellow areas he would interpret as desert land, the greenish areas he might consider vegetation, but what would he make out of the larger regions of blue? This would certainly puzzle him, because, unfamiliar with oceans, he could not believe that such vast tracts could really be water. He would easily interpret the polar snow caps, and the waters at their edges, but the oceans would be impossible to solve. The suggestion, by some audacious interpreter, that this vast blue area was water, would be answered by showing that these so-called bodies of water bordered vast tracts of sandy deserts with no canals running into them for irrigation or navigation purposes. Even the polar snow caps would be doubted, because they seemed to extend far down into temperate latitudes; and on their recedence in summer, there would be seen no dark, bordering seas as the result of their melting. The vegetation, instead of unfolding at the north and gradually extending southward, would unfold in a contrary direction, appearing first in south temperate latitudes and developing northward. The perennial character of the vegetation in the tropics would puzzle him. Even if he recognized oases in the deserts of America and Africa, the results of Artesian wells or springs, he could not believe them to be vegetation; for he would detect no irrigating canals running into them. He would come to the conclusion that no creature could possibly exist on the Earth, as the tremendous force of gravitation with great atmospheric pressure would forbid the existence of any organic forms. The immense clouds veiling the surface must at times suffer condensation, and the impact of raindrops would, from their velocity and weight, smash everything in the way of life. Life, if it existed in forms supported by appendages, must have legs of iron to sustain its weight, and a crust like a turtle to be impervious to raindrops, and this would be contrary to all Martian analogy. The courses of rivers, if detected, would puzzle him from their irregularity, unless he dared to suggest that these long sinuous channels extending for thousands of miles were identical to the little rivulets he had studied near his own poles.