Phobos, the nearest moon, is only 4,000 miles from the surface of Mars, and is obliged to move with such great velocity to prevent falling, that it actually makes a circuit about its primary in only seven hours and thirty-eight minutes. But Mars turns on its axis in twenty-four hours and thirty-seven minutes, so the moon goes round three times, while Mars does once, hence it rises in the west and sets in the east, making one day of Mars equal three of its months. This moon changes every two hours, passing all phases in a single martial night; is anomalous in the solar system, and tends to subvert that theory of cosmic evolution wherein a rotating gaseous sun cast off concentric rings, afterward becoming planets. Astronomers were not satisfied with the telescope; true, they beheld the phenomena of the solar system; planets rotating on axes, and satellites revolving about them. They saw sunspots, faculæ, and solar upheaval; watched eclipses, transits, and the alternations of summer and winter on Mars, and detected the laws of gravity and motion in the system to which the earth belongs. They then devised the micrometer.

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