The telescopic view of Mars at once reveals features of considerable interest. We are no longer presented with anything like the beautiful phases of Venus, though Mars does show a slight phase when his position makes a right angle with the sun and the earth. This phase, however, never amounts to more than a dull gibbosity, like that of the moon two or three days before or after full--the most uninteresting of phases. But the other details which are visible much more than atone for any deficiency in this respect. The brilliant ruddy star expands under telescopic power into a broad disc whose ground tint is a warm ochre. This tint is diversified in two ways. At the poles there are brilliant patches of white, larger or smaller according to the Martian season; while the whole surface of the remaining orange-tinted portion is broken up by patches and lines of a dark greenish-grey tone. The analogy with Arctic and Antarctic ice and snow-fields, and with terrestrial continents and seas, is at once and almost irresistibly suggested, although, as will be seen, there are strong reasons for not pressing it too far. The dark markings, though by no means so sharply defined as the outlines of lunar objects, are yet evidently permanent features; at least this may be confidently affirmed of the more prominent among them. Some of these can be readily recognised on drawings dating from 200 years back, and have served to determine with very satisfactory accuracy the planet's rotation period. In accordance with the almost irresistible evidence which the telescope was held to present, these features were assumed to be seas, straits and bays, while the general ochre-tinted portion of the planet's surface was considered to be dry land. On this supposition the land area of Mars amounts to 5/7 of the planet's surface, water being confined to the remaining 2/7. But it is by no means to be taken as an accepted fact that the dark and light areas do represent water and land. One fact most embarrassing to those who hold this traditional view is that in the great wealth of detail which observation with the huge telescopes of to-day has accumulated the bulk belongs to the dark areas. Gradations of shade are seen constantly in them; delicate details are far more commonly to be observed upon them than upon the bright portions of the surface, and several of the 'canals' have been traced clear through the so-called seas. Speaking of his observations of Mars in 1894 with the 36-inch refractor of the Lick observatory, Professor Barnard says: 'Though much detail was shown on the bright "continental" regions, the greater amount was visible on the so-called "seas."... During these observations the impression seemed to force itself upon me that I was actually looking down from a great altitude upon just such a surface as that in which our observatory was placed. At these times there was no suggestion that the view was one of far-away seas and oceans, but