whence there is a resultant cooling effect of 10 or 15 per cent. This acts by day as well as by night, so that the greater heat received at high altitudes does not warm the soil so much as a less amount of heat with a denser atmosphere.
This effect is further intensified by the fact that a less dense cannot absorb and transmit so much heat as a more dense atmosphere. Here then we have an absolute law of nature to be observed operating everywhere on the earth, and the mode of action of which is fairly well understood. This law is, that reduced atmospheric pressure increases radiation, or loss of heat, more rapidly than it increases insolation or gain of heat, so that the result is always a considerable lowering of temperature. What this lowering is can be seen in the universal fact, that even within the tropics perpetual snow covers the higher mountain summits, while on the high plains of the Andes, at 15,000 or 16,000 feet altitude, where there is very little or no snow, travellers are often frozen to death when delayed by storms; yet at this elevation the atmosphere has much more than double the density of that of Mars!
The error in Mr. Lowell's argument is, that he claims for the scanty atmosphere of Mars that it allows more sun-heat to reach the surface; but he omits to take account of the enormously increased loss of heat by direct radiation, as well
