The instrumental equipment of his observatory is of the very best, and the "seeing" at Flagstaff is described as excellent. In support of the latter statement, Mr. Lampland, of the Lowell Observatory, maintains that the faintest stars shown on charts made at the Lick Observatory with the 36–inch telescope there, are perfectly visible with the 24–inch telescope at Flagstaff.
Professor Lowell is, indeed, generally at issue with the other observers of Mars. He finds the canals extremely narrow and sharply defined, and he attributes the blurred and hazy appearance, which they have presented to other astronomers, to the unsteady and imperfect atmospheric conditions in which their observations have been made. He assigns to the thinnest a width of two or three miles, and from fifteen to twenty to the larger. Relatively to their width, however, he finds their length enormous. Many of them are 2000 miles long, while one is even as much as 3540. Such lengths as these are very great in comparison with the smallness of the planet. He considers that the canals stand in some peculiar relation to the polar cap, for they crowd together in its neighbourhood. In place, too, of ill-defined condensations, he sees sharp black spots where the canals meet and intersect, and to these he gives the name of "Oases." He further lays particular stress upon a dark band of a blue tint, which is always seen closely to surround the edges of the polar caps all the time that they are disappearing; and this he takes to be a proof that the white material is something which actually melts. Of all substances which we know, water alone, he affirms, would act in such a manner.
The question of melting at all may seem strange in a planet which is situated so far from the sun, and possesses such a rarefied atmosphere. But Professor Lowell considers that this very thinness of the atmosphere allows the direct solar rays to fall with great intensity upon the planet's surface, and that this heating effect is accentuated by the great length of the Martian summer. In consequence he concludes that, although the general climate of Mars is decidedly cold, it is above the freezing point of water.
The observations at Flagstaff appear to do away with the old idea that the darkish areas are seas, for numerous lines belonging to the so-called "canal system" are seen to traverse them. Again, there is no star-like image of the sun reflected from them, as there would be, of course, from the surface of a great sheet of water. Lastly, they are observed to vary in tone and colour with the changing Martian seasons, the blue-green changing into ochre, and later on back again into blue-green. Professor Lowell regards these areas as great tracts of vegetation, which are brought into activity as the liquid reaches them from the melting snows.
Plate XII. A Map of the Planet Mars
We see here the Syrtis Major (or "Hour-Glass Sea"), the polar caps, several "oases," and a large number of "canals," some of which are double. The South is at the top of the picture, in accordance with the inverted view given by an astronomical telescope. From a drawing by Professor Percival Lowell.
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With respect to the canals, the Lowell observations further inform us that these are invisible during the Martian winter, but begin to appear in the spring when the polar cap is disappearing. Professor Lowell, therefore, inclines to the view that in the middle of the so-called canals there exist actual waterways which serve the purposes of irrigation, and that what we see is not the waterways themselves, for they are too narrow, but the fringe of vegetation which springs up along the banks as the liquid is borne through them from the melting of the polar snows. He supports this by his observation that the canals begin to appear in the neighbourhood of the polar caps, and gradually grow, as it were, in the direction of the planet's equator.