The Things that Live on Mars
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"The Things that Live on Mars" is a 1908 non-fiction essay by English writer H. G. Wells, with four illustrations by American artist William Robinson Leigh, about the habitability and possibility of life on Mars, ideas that Wells had previously explored a decade earlier in his science fiction work The War of the Worlds (1898). "The Things that Live on Mars" was originally published in Cosmopolitan, in the same issue as "Story of the Mars Expedition", an essay by American astronomer David Peck Todd describing the 1907 Lowell expedition to Chile, an attempt to capture images of the purported Martian canals. Lowell's canals were later discredited and explained as an optical illusion in the early 20th century.
"There are certain features in which they are likely to resemble us. And as likely as not they will be covered with feathers or fur. It is no less reasonable to suppose, instead of a hand, a group of tentacles or proboscis-like organs"
"A jungle of big, slender, stalky, lax-textured, flood-fed plants with a sort of insect life fluttering amidst the vegetation"
"The same reason that will make the vegetation laxer and flimsier will make the forms of the Martian animal kingdom laxer and flimsier and either larger or else slenderer than Earthly types"
William Robinson Leigh
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William Robinson Leigh was an American artist and illustrator, who was known for his painted Western scenes.
Bears in the Path (Surprise), 1904, Oil on canvas, Sid Richardson Museum, Fort Worth, Texas
The Hold Up (The Ambush), 1903, Oil on canvas, Sid Richardson Museum, Fort Worth, Texas