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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



quite say with Mr. Philips, that " in all the 

 world's history the story has no parallel." 

 This story has already been told by differ- 

 ent persons from different points of view ; 

 but by none who had a better right to tell 

 it and from whom the world had a better 

 right to ask for it than Engineer Melville, 

 who after De Long's death was the titular 

 commander of the expedition. The earlier 

 part of the expedition, up to the crushing of 

 the Jeannette by the ice, being already famil- 

 iar, is but lightly dwelt upon. The real inter- 

 est begins when the men took to the ice, and 

 increases till the end of the search for De 

 Long's party. The book abounds with inci- 

 dents that help to realize what Arctic life 

 really is. The constant imminence of its 

 dangers was shown when the floe on which 

 the party were encamped split through the 

 center of De Long's tent ; " and had it not 

 been for the weight of the sleepers on either 

 end of the rubber blanket those in the mid- 

 dle must inevitably have dropped into the 

 sea." A strong picture of the straits to 

 which men may be reduced for food ap- 

 pears in the observation that walrus -hide 

 may have the solitary advantage over hemp 

 for ropes, in that " upon a pinch it can be 

 eaten. Indeed, fresh walrus -hide, roasted 

 with the hair on, is toothsome at any time, 

 and many members of our company feasted 

 on it after consuming their rations of pem- 

 mican.'" We have views of what traveling 

 on the ice is when we are told that the men 

 did not mind having their toes protruding 

 through their moccasins so long as the soles 

 of their feet were clear of the ice, but they 

 could not keep them clear ; and in the inci- 

 dent of their finding having, in order to 

 keep all their things together, to go thirteen 

 times over each mile that, after marching 

 from twenty-five to thirty miles a day for 

 two weeks, they had been drifted back 

 twenty-four miles. Finally, at the begin- 

 ning of winter, on the 6th of August, they 

 were able and glad to take to the sea, in 

 three boats. They kept together till some 

 time after the 10th of September, when they 

 were separated in a furious storm, and one 

 of the boats was never afterward heard 

 from. It was agreed they should all en- 

 deavor to land at Cape Barkin, and meet 

 there. How they landed, and what befell 

 either of the two parties that survived the 



sea-voyage, are graphically told by Engineer 

 Melville, from his own experiences and from 

 the narratives of Nindcman and Noros and 

 the notes left by Captain De Long. 



The account of the Greely Relief Expe- 

 dition is brief, but testifies to the value of 

 Greely's work that there is no one living 

 competent to criticise his conduct of the expe- 

 dition on which he was sent, " beyond affirm- 

 ing that he performed the greatest amount 

 of scientific work possible at least expense, 

 and made good his retreat from depot to 

 depot, until he arrived at the point of safety, 

 where our Government had promised to de- 

 posit supplies and have a vessel awaiting to 

 carry him and his band away from the 

 ' Land of Desolation.' " Not daunted by 

 what he has seen and experienced of Arctic 

 traveling, Mr. Melville has started again for 

 the north pole, expecting to reach it, and 

 to confirm a theory he has formed of the 

 proper way of getting there. Believing that 

 no vessel can penetrate the ice-barrier much 

 beyond where explorers have gone, he fig- 

 ures to himself a firm or nearly firm ice-cap 

 interspersed with frequent islands, cover- 

 ing the sea from the eighty-fifth parallel to 

 the pole, and that a properly equipped ex- 

 pedition can cross this and return upon it, 

 the whole distance both ways being only a 

 hundred miles greater than his party trav- 

 ersed from the Jeannette to the Lena Delta ; 

 and he believes that the results to accrue 

 from reaching the pole will more than pay 

 for all that has been spent in other efforts. 



MiND-READING AND BEYOND. By WlLLIAM 



A. Hovey. Boston : Lee k Shepard. 

 Pp. 201. Price, $1.25. 



An association of gentlemen engaged in 

 scientific investigation was formed in the 

 spring of 18S2, under the designation of the 

 Society for Psychical Research, the object 

 of which was stated in its prospectus to be 

 to examine the nature and extent of any in- 

 fluence which may be exerted by one mind 

 upon another, apart from any recognized 

 mode of perception ; the study of hypnot- 

 ism, mesmeric trance, clairvoyance, and al- 

 lied phenomena ; a careful investigation of 

 data regarding apparitions ; and an inquiry 

 into the phenomena commonly called spir- 

 itual. Among the members of this society 

 were Lord Rayleigh, the Bishop of Carlisle, 



