﻿304 RESOURCES OF A PARTY August, 



by currents from the north on other meridians. 

 The annual heat has been diminishing in London 

 ever since 1844, according to Mr. Glaisher's dia- 

 gram, and will reach its minimum in 1851. 



It can be stated only as a conjecture, though by 

 no means an improbable one, that Sir John Franklin 

 entered Lancaster Sound at the close of a group of 

 warm years, when the ice was in the most favour- 

 able condition of diminution, and that since then 

 the annual heat has attained its minimum, pro- 

 bably in 1S47 or 1848, and may now be increasing 

 again. At all events, it is conceivable that, having 

 pushed on boldly in one of the last of the favourable 

 years of the cycle, the ice, produced in the unfavour- 

 able ones which followed, has shut him in, and been 

 found insurmountable ; but there remains the hope 

 that if this be the period of rise of the mean heat 

 in that quarter, the zealous and enterprising officers 

 now on his track, will not encounter obstructions 

 equal to those which prevented their skilful and no 

 less enterprising and zealous predecessor in the 

 search, from carrying his ships beyond Cape Leo- 

 pold. 



With respect to the maintenance of a party de- 

 tained on the islands north of Coronation Gulf, 

 rein-deer and musk-oxen may be procured by skil- 

 ful hunters ; but unless the chase were duly or- 

 ganised, and only the most expert marksmen and 



