392 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



ARCTIC CLIMATE. 



SIR JOHN RICHARDSON, in the history of his late expedition, gives the 

 following facts with regard to the climate of the arctic regions. He 

 says : " The power of the sun this day, in a cloudless sky, was so 

 great, that Mr. Rae and I were glad to take shelter in the water while 

 the crews were engaged on the portages. The irritability of the human 

 frame is either greater in these northern latitudes, or the sun, notwith- 

 standing its obliquity, acts more powerfully upon it than near the 

 equator ; for I have never felt its direct rays so oppressive within the 

 tropics as I have experienced them to be on some occasions in the high 

 latitudes. The rapid evaporation of both snow and ice in the winter 

 and spring, long before the action of the sun has produced the slightest 

 thaw or appearance of moisture, is made evident to residents in the 

 high latitudes by many facts of daily occurrence ; and I may mention 

 that the drying of linen furnishes a familiar one. When a shirt, after 

 being washed, is exposed in the open air to a temperature of 40 to 50 

 below zero, it is instantly rigidly frozen, and may be broken if violently 

 bent. If agitated when in this condition by a strong wind, it makes a 

 rustling noise like theatrical thunder. In an hour or two, however, or 

 nearly as quickly as it would do if exposed to the sun in the moist cli- 

 mate of England, it dries and becomes limber. In consequence of the 

 extreme dryness of the atmosphere in winter, most articles of English 

 manufacture, made of wood, horn, or ivory, brought to Rupert's Land, 

 are shrivelled, bent and broken. The handles of razors and knives, 

 combs, ivory scales, and various other things kept in the warm rooms, 

 are changed in this way. The human body, also, becomes visibly 

 electric from the dryness of the skin. One cold night I rose from my 

 bed, and, having lighted a lantern, was going out to observe the ther- 

 mometer, with no other clothing than my flannel night dress, when, on 

 approaching my hand to the iron latch of the door, a distinct spark was 

 elicited. Friction of the skin, at almost all times in winter, produced the 

 electric odor. Even at mid-winter we had three hours and a half of 

 daylight. On the 20th of December, I required a candle to write at 

 the window at ten in the morning. On the 29th, the sun, after ten 

 days' absence, rose at the Fishery, where the horizon was open ; and, 

 on the 8th of January, both limbs of that luminary were seen from a 

 gentle eminence behind the fort, rising above the centre of Fishery 

 Island. For several days previously, however, its place in the heavens 

 at noon had been denoted by rays of light shooting into the sky above 

 the woods. The lowest temperature in January was 50 Fah. On the 

 1st of February, the sun rose to us at nine o'clock and set at three, 

 and the days lengthened rapidly. On the 23d I could write in my 

 room without artificial light from ten A. M., to half-past two P. M., mak- 

 ing four hours and a half of bright daylight. The moon, in the long 

 nights, was a most beautiful object ; that satellite being constantly 

 above the horizon for nearly a fortnight together in the middle of the 

 lunar month. Venus also shone with a brilliancy which is never wit- 

 nessed in a sky loaded with vapors ; and, unless in snowy weather, our 

 nights were always enlivened by the beams of the aurora." 



