Prof. Lowell argues that the appearance of the network of lines and spots formed by the canals and oases, and its regular behaviour, "preclude its causation on such a scale by any natural process," his assumption being that he has obtained finality in his seeing of the planet, and that no improvement in telescopes, no increase in experience, no better eyesight will ever break up the perfect regularity of form and position, which he gives to the canals, into finer and more complex detail.
But the history of our knowledge of the planet's surface teaches us a different lesson. Two small objects appear repeatedly on the drawings made by Beer and Mädler in 1830; these are two similar dark spots, the one isolated, the other at the end of a gently curved line. Both spots resemble in form and character the oases of Prof. Lowell, and the curved line, at the termination of which one of the spots appears, represents closely the appearance presented by several of the canals. In the year 1830 no better drawings of Mars had appeared; and in representing these two spots as truly circular and the curved line as narrow, sharp, and uniform, Beer and Mädler undoubtedly portrayed the planet as actually they saw it. The one marking was named by Schiaparelli the Lacus Solis, the other, the Sinus Sabæus, and they are two of the best known and most easily recognized of the planet's features; so that it is easy to trace the growth of our knowledge of both of them from 1830 up to the present time. They were drawn by Dawes in 1864, by Schiaparelli in 1877 and the succeeding years, by Lowell in 1894 and since, and by Antoniadi in 1909 and 1911. But whereas the drawings of Beer and Mädler, made by the aid of a telescope of 4 inches aperture, show the two spots as exactly alike, in those of Dawes, made with a telescope of 8 inches, the resemblance between the two has entirely vanished, and neither is shown as a plain circular dot. Since then, observers of greater experience and equipped with more powerful instruments have directed their attention to these two objects, and a mass of complicated structure has been brought out in the regions which were so simple in the sight of Beer and Mädler, so that not a trace of resemblance remains between the two objects that to them appeared indistinguishable.