Half of Brooklyn on Roof Tops for Glimpse of Mars

French Line Passengers Blame Planet for Rough Seas While Radio Listens In for Signals.

4,500 Mile Half-Circle On Disc of Mars Espied In Far-Off Australia

SYDNEY, Australia, Aug. 23. — Walter Dale, Australian astronomer, has discovered a new half-circle 4,500 miles long and sixty miles wide on the disc of Mars.

Gale, announcing the discovery, says he has distinguished that a definite canal on the planet, 5,000 miles long, has completely disappeared.

Half the inhabitants of Brooklyn were out on the roof tops last night trying to get a glimpse of the red planet Mars, 34,630,000 miles away. They, like the astronomers watching for the planet during the past two days, saw nothing to boast about.

Low in the southeast, where it rose at about 10:30, the great orb, distinguishable by its reddish glow, seemed, to the naked eye, much the same as ever.

More than 1,000 passengers arriving yesterday on the French Line steamship France blamed Mars for the two days of turbulent weather encountered off the Grand Banks.

On Thursday afternoon the vessel encountered unusual electrical disturbances off the Grand Banks which prevented the wireless operator from communicating with the liner Paris of the same line, although the steamships were but twenty miles away, according to Capt. L. Roch, of the France.

Ordinarily the French liners are able to telephone via wireless with each other when the vessels are 300 miles away. The same phenomenon occurred when the France tried to "raise" the radio shore stations.

Peculiar radio signals which were picked up by radio stations in various parts of America and Europe, were not messages from Mars, according to scientists of world-wide reputation, who have been giving this subject much thought.

These noises, according to experts, are the result of a combination of atmospherics and heterodyning, popularly called "interference." The signals heard in British Columbia were explained by E. J. Houghton, superintendent of the Dominion Government Wireless Service. These signals, he explained, were sent from United States radio beacons on a new type of transmitter. A series of dashes, he said, is the characteristic of the beacons for the guidance of vessels in Puget Sound and on the Columbia River.

Nikola Tesla, who in 1900, claimed that certain vibrations recorded on his instruments were from Mars, in an interview yesterday, said he had never found reason to doubt he was reasonably sure a quarter of a century ago, that intelligent life exists on Mars.

“Twenty-five years ago,” he said, “my instruments recorded electrical disturbances emanating from Mars. From that day I have been perfecting means for interplanetary communication, and I live with the hope that others will confirm my observations, and that ultimately inestimable value to men.”