Peroival Lowell '76,

A life nobly devoted to intellectual and scientific research was that of Percival Lowell, who is dead at Flagstaff, Arizona, where in 1894 he erected his great astronomical observatory. Mr. Lowell had already attained honor in another field of research when his interest in astronomy, and his conviction that the altitude and atmosphere of Flagstaff offered an opportunity for perhaps a more intimate scrutiny of the planets than any which had yet been made, led him to begin his great work at that point. He had won rank for his use of the scientific imagination in the field of Japanese occultism and the Oriental psychology. If Mr. Lowell had continued in that field he might, perhaps, have gained less popular celebrity than his investigations and publications in connection with the markings developed by photography on the face on the planet Mars have won him, but he would nevertheless have held a high position in the world of scholarship.

Concerning his Martian researches, it is only to be said that while the general judgment of science is against his conclusion that the so--called canals are proved to be the work of intelligent beings, his work has keenly stimulated the study of that planet, and has greatly advanced scientific knowledge of it. Even now the question of the nature and cause of these markings, may be regarded as in abeyance. Lowell had not proved his case. Scientists tell us that the Schiaperelli and Lowell "canals" on Mars exist in these astronomer's own psychology, or rather in their own eyes. Yet the markings which Mr. Lowell had noted at Flagstaff, whether they are continuous, as he assumes, or in reality discontinuous, as other astronomers assert, certainly exist, and Mr. Lowell's researches had the merit of being a positive and constructive theory concerning them, which he was willing to maintain against the world's denial. At all events, the observatory at Flagstaff remains, to be not only a monument to his spirit and his zeal, but to be also the lasting and the best means of demonstrating whether he was right or wrong. And in the last analysis, Mr. Lowell himself would have desired nothing more than that the clear Arizona air and the superb instruments which he provided there should find out all that human ingenuity may possibly make know, not only about Mars, but about other planets and the stars. He has lived a useful life, which honors the city of his birth and the University of his education. Boston Transcript.