F. GEOGRAPHY. 149 



Land being entirely altered, it proving to be twice as large 

 as was once supposed, and various new islands having been 

 discovered. 15 A, March 16, 1872, 338. 



PROPOSED BRITISH ARCTIC EXPEDITION. 



We learn by the report of the proceedings of the meeting 

 of the Royal Geographical Society of London of April 22, 

 that Great Britain does not feel inclined to allow the great 

 powers of Europe and America to monopolize the problem 

 of arctic exploration. A paper was read on the occasion re- 

 ferred to by Admiral Sherrard Osborne, in which he remarks 

 that an area of over 1,000,000 square miles is still unexplored 

 around the region of the north pole, and that the route by 

 way of Smith's Sound is still the only one by which a dis- 

 tance farther than 80 north can be reached. The numerous 

 expeditions on the part of the Germans and Swedes in the 

 last few years have only shown, in Admiral Osborne's opin- 

 ion, that the outpour of ice from the north, between Green- 

 land and the east, is so great as to prevent a passage by that 

 route. Land evidently lies to the north of Spitzbergen, and 

 Nova Zembla has been circumnavigated. The experiences 

 of Payer and Weyprecht during the last summer were thought 

 to be very illusory, the advance made by them being com- 

 paratively unimportant. 



The reasons for trying Smith's Sound again are three : first, 

 the most advanced station toward the pole, 82, has been 

 reached in that way ; second, explorations can easily be made 

 from it toward the pole ; third, it affords the largest guaran- 

 tee for the safety of the people engaged in the expedition. 



In these views Admiral Osborne w r as sustained by Sir 

 George Back and other experienced explorers, who seemed 

 to be unanimous in preferring the Smith's Sound route. As 

 this is the channel selected by Captain Hall for his polar ex- 

 ploration, these remarks form a very gratifying indorsement 

 of the propriety of the American enterprise. 



Dr. Hooker, at the same meeting, referred to the botanical 

 interest that would attach to the further researches into the 

 arctic flora. The examination of fossil arctic plants has 

 shown that at one time there were between fifty and sixty 

 kinds of large trees growing in these regions: among them 

 species of elm, oak, plane, pine, maple, etc. These flourished 



