various planets would be beautifully disposed of if we could accept the
theory urged by Mr. Cope Whitehouse, to the effect that the sun is not
really a hot body at all, and that what we call solar light and heat are
only local manifestations produced in our atmosphere by the
transformation of some other form of energy transmitted from the sun;
very much as the electric impulses carried by a wire from the
transmitting to the receiving station on a telephone line are translated
by the receiver into waves of sound. According to this theory, which is
here mentioned only as an ingenuity and because something of the kind so
frequently turns up in one form or another in popular semi-scientific
literature, the amount of heat and light on a planet would depend mainly
upon local causes.]

To an extent which most of us, perhaps, do not fully appreciate, we are
indebted for many of the pleasures and conveniences and some of the
necessities of life on our planet to its faithful attendant, the moon.
Neither Mercury nor Venus has a moon, but Mars has two moons. This
statement, standing alone, might lead to the conclusion that, as far as
the advantages a satellite can afford to the inhabitants of its master
planet are concerned, the people of Mars are doubly fortunate. So they
would be, perhaps, if Mars's moons were bodies comparable in size with
our moon, but in fact they are hardly more than a pair of very
entertaining astronomical toys. The larger of the two, Phobos, is
believed to be about seven miles in diameter; the smaller, Deimos, only
five or six miles. Their dimensions thus resemble those of the more
minute of the asteroids, and the suggestion has even been made that they
may be captured asteroids which have fallen under the gravitational
control of Mars.

The diameters just mentioned are Professor Pickering's estimates, based
on the amount of light the little satellites reflect, for they are much
too small to present measurable disks. Deimos is 14,600 miles from the
center of Mars and 12,500 miles from its surface. Phobos is 5,800 miles
from the center of the planet and only 3,700 from the surface. Deimos
completes a revolution about the planet in thirty hours and eighteen
minutes, and Phobos in the astonishingly short period--although, of
course, it is in strict accord with the law of gravitation and in that
sense not astonishing--of seven hours and thirty-nine minutes.

Since Mars takes twenty-four hours and thirty-sev