"In Mars," he says, "we have before us the spectacle of a world relatively well on in years, a world much older than the earth. To so much about his age Mars bears witness on his face. He shows unmistakable signs of being old. Advancing planetary years have left their mark legible there. His continents are all smoothed down; his oceans have all dried up.... Mars being thus old himself, we know that evolution on his surface must be similarly advanced. This only informs us of its condition relative to the planet's capabilities. Of its actual state our data are not definite enough to furnish much deduction. But from the fact that our own development has been comparatively a recent thing, and that a long time would be needed to bring even Mars to his present geological condition, we may judge any life he may support to be not only relatively, but really older than our own. From the little we can see such appears to be the case. The evidence of handicraft, if such it be, points to a highly intelligent mind behind it. Irrigation, unscientifically conducted, would not give us such truly wonderful mathematical fitness in the several parts to the whole as we there behold.... Quite possibly such Martian folk are possessed of inventions of which we have not dreamed, and with them electrophones and kinetoscopes are things of a bygone past, preserved with veneration in museums as relics of the clumsy contrivances of the simple childhood of the race. Certainly what we see hints at the existence of beings who are in advance of, not behind us, in the journey of life."[3] [Footnote 3: Mars, by Percival Lowell, p. 207 _et seq._] Granted the existence of such a race as is thus described, and to them it might not seem a too appalling enterprise, when their planet had become decrepit, with its atmosphere thinned out and its supply of water depleted, to grapple with the destroying hand of nature and to prolong the career of their world by feats of chemistry and engineering as yet beyond the compass of human knowledge. It is confidence, bred from considerations like these, in the superhuman powers of the supposed inhabitants of Mars that has led to the popular idea that they are trying to communicate by signals with the earth. Certain enigmatical spots of light, seen at the edge of the illuminated disk of Mars, and projecting into the unilluminated part--for Mars, although an outer planet, shows at particular times a gibbous phase resembling that of the moon just before or just after the period of full moon--have been interpreted by some, but without any scientific evidence, as of artificial origin.