Professor Pickering thought they were far more limited in size than had been supposed, and even might not exist as true seas.
Professor Barnard, with the Lick thirty-six inch telescope, discerned an astonishing wealth of detail on the surface of Mars, so intricate, minute, and abundant, that it baffled all attempts to delineate it; and these peculiarities were seen upon the supposed seas as well as on the land-surfaces.

In fact, under the best conditions these 'seas' lost all trace of uniformity, their appearance being that of a mountainous country, broken by ridges, rifts, and canyons, seen from a great elevation.

As we shall see later on these doubts soon became certainties, and it is now almost universally admitted that Mars possesses no permanent bodies of water..