What Did a Scaparelli Call the Lines Canali?

Italian astronomer giovanni scaparelli made a bunch of detailed observations of mars. He saw light and dark patches on mars's surface, which he described as seas and continents. In 18 77, though, he also saw a network of lines on the surfaceand gave these lines a name that turned out to be very important. What did he call them? And why was it so significant? Scaparelli called the lines canali. This is an italian word that means channels or grooves. But when people translatedScaparelli's works into english, they rendered the word canali as canals. According to the miriam webster dictionary, a canal is