It may be safely asserted that not one drop of water would escape evaporation or insoak at even a hundred miles from its source.

[5] [Footnote 5: What the evaporation is likely to be in Mars may be estimated by the fact, stated by Professor J.W.Gregory in his recent volume on 'Australia' in _Stanford's Compendium_, that in North-West Victoria evaporation is at the rate of ten feet per annum, while in Central Australia it is very much more.

The greatly diminished atmospheric pressure in Mars will probably more than balance the loss of sun-heat in producing rapid evaporation.] _Miss Clerke on the Scanty Water-supply._ On this point I am supported by no less an authority than the historian of modern astronomy, the late Miss Agnes Clerke.

In the _Edinburgh Review_ (of October 1896) there is an article entitled 'New Views about Mars,' exhibiting the writer's characteristic fulness of knowledge and charm of style.

Speaking of Mr.Lowell's idea of the 'canals' carrying the surplus water across the equator, far into the opposite hemisphere, for purposes of irrigation there (which we see he again states in the present volume), Miss Clerke writes: "We can hardly imagine so shrewd a people as the irrigators of Thule and Hellas[6] wasting labour, and the life-giving fluid, after so unprofitable a fashion.