1853.] FREEZING SCALE OF MERCURY. 205 



and so I told my surgeon when that idea was realized, 

 but I am constantly asking people to view my nose. 

 But as I have so far wandered into self, and I know that 

 certain professional men who interest themselves about 

 me will expect to know, I will merely say that I expected 

 certain wounds, cuts, frost-bites of youth, etc., to trouble 

 me. I have suffered intensely, more than can be ex- 

 plained, but nothing to disqualify me, in any manner, 

 for this important command, or the liabilities attached 

 thereto. My feelings are my own ; so long as I perform 

 all my duties, who cares for them ? 



Our present temperatures are low enough to satisfy 

 most men, but if, in truth, 90 can be truly found in 

 this region, I would almost stop to see it. 



Mercury. The freezing-point at which pure mercury 

 (not impure amalgams of spurious mercury at low prices, 

 but volatilized, distilled, adapted for thermometers, etc.) 

 should congeal still continues to haunt me. Unfortu- 

 nately, I left behind me every work on this subject to 

 which I could, as to late date, refer. That 39 '5 is 

 not the correct point of congelation our standard mercu- 

 rial thermometers prove, nor do they always contract to 

 the same division. The congelation of mercury does not 

 appear to form any part of the acknowledged divisions 

 on these thermometric (?) instruments : the mercury ther- 

 mometers supplied to this Expedition from Greenwich, as 

 well as Kew, were graduated below 40. I had myself 

 remarked that no notice was taken of them in the record, 

 under the assumption probably that they could not, dare 

 not, act contrary to print, but I ventured to differ, why 

 I will state. 



